First Look at Analysis Services 2005 - Professional SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 with MDX - page 30

Differences between Analysis Services 2000 and
Analysis Services 2005
Analysis Services 2005 is not just an evolutionary step up from Analysis Ser-
vices 2000, but a quantum leap forward in functionality, scalability, and man-
ageability. Relational databases provide a simple, flexible, manageable
schema; they provide access of data to the end user easily congealed into in-
formation rich reports. On the other hand, OLAP databases are typically used
for high-end performance by the user who needs rich analytics and exploration
capabilities. Analysis Services 2005 merges the capabilities of relational and
OLAP worlds, thereby providing a unified view of the data to the end user. This
unified model is called the Unified Dimensional Model (UDM). In sum, Analysis
Services 2005 is a powerful, enterprise-class product and one that you can
use to build large-scale OLAP databases and implement strategic business
analysis against those databases. You learn more about the UDM and the ad-
vanced analytics capabilities of Analysis Services 2005 in chapters 6 , 9 and
18 . This chapter gives you hands-on experience with both the development
and management tools environments.
Development, Administrative, and Client Tools
If you have used Analysis Services 2000, you have used the Analysis Man-
ager. The Analysis Manager, which is shipped with that version, is implemen-
ted as a snap-in to the Microsoft Management Console (MMC). The Analysis
Manager is a development environment for building Analysis Services data-
bases as well as a management environment to manage multi-dimensional
databases. Analysis Services 2000 provided limited functionality with respect
to client tools. Customers were able to browse data within the Analysis Man-
ager. A sample application called MDX Sample that was shipped along with
the product provided you with the capability to build and send queries against
Analysis Services databases and view the results.
Analysis Services 2005 has separate environments for development and man-
agement. The development environment is called Business Intelligence Devel-
opment Studio (BIDS) and is integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio. Similar to
a developer building a Visual Basic or C++ project, you will be able to build a
Business Intelligence project. The management environment is called SQL
Server Management Studio (SSMS). SSMS is one complete integrated man-