ADOMD.NET - Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services - page 599

ADOMD.NET Connections

In a typical data access system, the first step is to establish a connection to a source of
data. A client application that works with Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services follows
the same rule, and establishes a connection to the data source. To establish this connec-
tion, ADOMD.NET provides the class AdomdConnection , which is similar to the connection
classes of SqlClient , OledbClient , and other ADO.NET providers.

AdomdConnection implements the IDBConnection interface and supports the majority of
methods defined by the interface, as shown in Figure 33.5.

System.Data.IDBConnection AdomdClient.AdomdConnection

FIGURE 33.5

The ADOMDConnection object implements the IDBConnection interface.

As shown in Listing 33.1, the client application uses the ConnectionString properly of
AdomdConnection class to specify information needed to make a connection—for example,
the name of the server or of the database.

LISTING 33.1

Opening and Closing Connections

//Create a connection string with connection properties.
String conString = “Datasource=localhost; Initial Catalog=Foodmart 2008”;

// Create a connection object.
AdomdConnection con = new AdomdConnection();

//Set the connection string on the connection object.
con.ConnectionString = conString;

//Open a connection.
con.Open();

//Do the necessary operations.

//Close the connection.
con.Close();

As you can see, this code is similar to the code of an application that uses ADO DB and
ADO.NET. In designing ADOMD.NET, we did our utmost to make sure that all the object
models we provide with Analysis Services—ADOMD.NET, AMO, and the OLE DB
provider—support the same set of properties.