Connected to Analysis Services
There are a variety of connection contexts to be considered when connected to Microsoft® SQL Server 2000™ Analysis Services. The context of the connection determines how the connection is established and which features and properties are available to the client application. For example, when connecting over the Internet, using HTTP, you should consider whether the User ID and Password properties will be needed to establish the connection. When connecting to an Analysis server, you may want to optimize cache properties for better performance.
Retrieving Data from Analysis Services
When using PivotTable® Service to retrieve data from Analysis Services, PivotTable Service communicates with a remote Analysis server through a network connection or through shared memory on the local computer. The network protocol is either TCP/IP or HTTP. If a connection request is made that references a remote SQL provider or other tabular data provider, the request is automatically routed to the provider in question. The caching of result sets and other optimizations is not visible to the client application.
Deriving Local Cube Files from Server Cubes (Slicing)
It is possible to build local cubes, which are based upon cubes that reside on a server. This process is similar to creating a local cube based on a fact table, except that the server cube itself is used as the data source. When a WHERE clause is specified as part of the CREATE CUBE statement's WHERE clause, or when only a subset of the available dimensions or measures are specified, the operation is referred to as a slice. For more information, see Building Local Cubes.
Building, Training, and Retrieving Data from a Data Mining Model
When connected to Analysis Services, it is possible to create, train (that is, process) and interact with
You can create a mining model on the server using Decision Support Objects (DSO). To create a mining model locally, use data definition language (DDL).
For more information about creating data mining models on the Analysis server, see Data Mining Examples.
Connecting Using HTTP
This feature enables the user to connect to the Analysis server through Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS). By setting the Data Source connection string property to an HTTP or HTTPS URL, PivotTable Service is able to tunnel a connection to the Analysis server through firewalls or proxy servers. This is accomplished by use of a special Active Server Pages (ASP) page, Msolap.asp, which is installed by default to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Analysis Services\Bin.
The rest of the connection string is specified normally.
For more information about the ConnectionString property, see the ADO documentation.