Advanced Cube Design - Professional SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 with MDX - page 473

Defining Security
Now that you know how to create and enhance a cube to meet your business
needs, you also need to know how to provide the right level of access to end
users. Many people consider security to be a management task to be assigned
to the administrators. However, your solution might be require Analysis Ser-
vices to perform fine-grain security checks, which can adversely impact calcu-
lations. Hence, the cube developer should be actively involved in defining and
testing security to verify users see the right data and experience good query
performance.
Analysis Services 2005 provides you with fine-grain security to control access
to metadata and data. You can also grant permissions to certain users who
need the ability to process a database, but who do not need full control of the
database. You can choose to secure data at the cube level, the dimension
level, or even the cell level. Because security is an important topic for you to
understand, especially with regard to dimension and cell security, Chapter 19
provides a complete example of a security definition. In this section, you learn
the basic steps involved in granting write access permissions to a cube and its
dimensions. The following steps will help you better understand how access
permissions can be applied to your cube and dimensions:
1. Right-click the Roles folder in the Solution Explorer of the sample Ad-
venture Works DW project and choose New Role. BIDS will create a
new role called Role.role and opens the Roles designer as shown in
Figure 9-76 .