Developing Client Applications

PivotTable® Service is the primary method of communication between a client application and a multidimensional data source or data mining model, such as Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Analysis Services. It is used by applications provided by Microsoft (such as the Microsoft Excel PivotTable and PivotChart® features) and by applications provided by third-party vendors. Programmers who want to develop custom client applications for Analysis Services must use PivotTable Service.

PivotTable Service client applications can retrieve, display and manipulate data from multidimensional sources, such as OLAP cubes, or from data mining models. PivotTable Service client applications can also create cube files and data mining models on the local computer, and populate them with data derived from an OLE DB tabular provider such as SQL Server or an OLAP cube. After a cube or mining model is created, client applications can use PivotTable Service to browse and analyze the data contained in it. In the case of OLAP cubes, client applications can conduct what-if analyses using writeback and cell allocations. In the case of local multidimensional OLAP (MOLAP) cubes, such analyses can be conducted even if the client application is not connected to the original data source. In this case, PivotTable Service takes the place of the Analysis server by providing many of the functions of the server on the local computer.

The data source for creating a local cube file or mining model can be any OLE DB data provider, such as SQL Server or Analysis Services.

Overview of Client Applications

Client applications that need to access OLAP data can be implemented either in a Component Object Model (COM) Automation language, such as Microsoft Visual Basic®, or in Microsoft Visual C++®. Client applications that are implemented in a COM Automation language or in C++ may access PivotTable service using Microsoft ActiveX® Data Objects (Multidimensional) (ADO MD), or they can use the COM interfaces provided by OLE DB for OLAP. For more information, see the OLE DB documentation.

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Excel and other Microsoft Office products work with PivotTable Service to provide access to OLAP cubes for creating reports and charts. For more information, see the Excel documentation.