Professional Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Administration

7.3. Administering Analysis Services Databases

Now that you understand more about the Analysis Services server, we will look at the administrative tasks needed for the databases that will ultimately be deployed and run on the Analysis Services server. The primary tasks associated with managing the Analysis Services databases include deployment to the server, processing Analysis Services objects, performing disaster recovery activities such as backup and restore operations, and synchronizing databases to copy entire databases.

7.3.1. Deploying Analysis Services Databases

Obviously, without deployment there is no value to running an Analysis Services server. Through deployment of Analysis Services databases to the server, original and changed designs are applied to the server.

When performing administrative tasks, you can either use Management Studio to affect changes directly in a database in what is commonly referred to as online mode, or you can work within Business Intelligence Developer Studio to affect changes via a Build and Deploy process commonly referred to as offline mode.

More specific to database deployment, you have the following options:

• Deploy changes directly from Business Intelligence Developer Studio.

• Script changes and deploy from within Management Studio.

• Make incremental deployments using the Deployment Wizard.

• Process changes using the Synchronize Database Wizard.

Many of these options are useful only in very specific circumstances and as such are not given ...