Professional Microsoft® SQL Server® Analysis Services 2008 with MDX

15.2. Query Execution Architecture

Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services 2008 consists of server and tools components that enable you to create databases and manage them. The server components are a set of binaries that comprise the Analysis Services service. BIDS, SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), Profiler, and a few additional binaries constitute the tools components. The multidimensional databases are stored on the server, which is also referred to as the SSAS engine. SSAS clients communicate to the SSAS engine via XML for Analysis, a standardized application programming interface for online analytical processing (OLAP). The XMLA API has two main methods, Discover and Execute. Discover allows callers to request metadata and data from the databases. Execute lets callers send commands such as Create, Alter, and Process, which are used for creating/updating the multidimensional database or MultiDimensional Expressions (MDX) queries. MDX query results can be retrieved in multidimensional or tabular format by the client. The Create, Alter, Delete, and Process statements are part of the Data Definition Language (DDL). SSAS provides a set of object models that abstract XMLA and make it easy for developers to build applications that can communicate with the SSAS engine.

15.2.1. Analysis Services Engine Components

Figure 15-3 shows the Analysis Services query execution architecture. Five major components constitute the Analysis Services server: Infrastructure, Data Mining, Metadata ...