Introduction to Data Warehousing and Analysis Services 2005 - Professional SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 with MDX - page 21

Figure 1-8
Even though XML/A helps in interoperability between different clients to Ana-
lysis Server, it comes with a cost on performance. If the responses from the
server are large, transmission of XML data across the wire may take a long
time depending on the type of network connection. Typically slow wide area
networks might suffer from performance due to large XML responses. In order
to combat this, Analysis Services 2005 supports the options for compression
and binary XML so that the XML responses from the server could be reduced.
These are optional features supported by Analysis Services 2005 that can be
enabled or disabled on the Server.
Analysis Services 2005 stores metadata information of databases in the form
of XML. Analysis Services 2005 provides you with the option of storing the
data or aggregated data efficiently in a proprietary format on Analysis Ser-
vices instance or storing them in the relational database. If you choose the
data and/ or aggregated data to be stored in the proprietary format you can