Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

Delivering Data to Users

SSAS provides a great deal of flexibility for building scalable OLAP solutions, but how do you present the data to users? The client-side components deliver much of the functionality of SSAS, using the same code base for the dimensional calculation engine, caching, and query processing. You can use the Pivot Table Service to manage client/server connections, and this is the layer for user interfaces to access SSAS cubes through the OLE DB for OLAP interface. ADO MD provides an application-level programming interface for development of OLAP applications. Third-party tools and Microsoft Excel and other Microsoft Office products will use the Pivot Table Service and PowerPivot to access cubes.

Slices of data that are retrieved ...