First Look at Analysis Services 2005 - Professional SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 with MDX - page 32

▪ Analysis Services 2000 had a thick client model that helped in
achieving very good query performance, but did not scale very well
in 3-tier applications (for example, Web scenarios).
▪ The metadata information of the databases was either stored in an
access database or a SQL Server database. Therefore maintenance
of data and metadata had to be done carefully.
▪ The backup format used to back up Analysis Services databases lim-
ited the file size to 2GB.
Analysis Services 2005, in addition to providing the best of the relational and
OLAP worlds, overcomes most of the limitations of Analysis Services 2000.
Following are some of the benefits of using the Analysis Services 2005:
▪ Two fundamental changes in Analysis Services 2005 are the thin cli-
ent architecture that helps in scalability of 2-tier or 3-tier applications
and the support of the native XML/A (XML for Analysis) protocol for
communication between client and server.
▪ Several new features added to Analysis Services 2005 facilitate op-
timal design of data warehouses to form UDMs. Parts II and III of this
book introduce these new features.
▪ Most of the size limitations on various objects have been greatly ex-
tended; or for all practical purposes, removed.
▪ Analysis Services 2005 provides better manageability, scalability,
fine-grain security, and higher reliability by supporting fail-over clus-
tering.
▪ Analysis Services 2005 natively supports Common Language
Runtime (CLR) stored procedures with appropriate security permis-
sions.
▪ Metadata information is represented as XML and resides along with
the data. This allows for easier maintainability and control over the
service.
▪ Analysis Services 2005 uses a different backup format (you learn
about backup in Chapter 12 ) than the one used in Analysis Services