Microsoft® Management Console (MMC) is used by Microsoft SQL Server™ OLAP Services and other server software and services to offer a consistent user interface. OLAP Services provides a snap-in program that operates within MMC and calls the OLAP Add-In Manager, which in turn calls registered add-in programs. The OLAP Manager’s user interface is implemented as an add-in program and is called by the OLAP Add-In Manager in the same way that your custom add-in program will be called.
Your add-in program can add nodes to the structure in the tree view as the user selects or expands a node and can augment node menus with items that will cause your program to be called when those items are selected. The OLAP Manager allows multiple custom add-in programs to be registered and operating at the same time.
Some ideas for custom add-in programs are:
You can use custom add-in programs to create reports on multidimensional metadata or usage-based analysis.
You can use custom add-in programs to create scheduling tools that handle automatic routine administrative activities.
You can create custom add-in programs to back up data and metadata.
You can create custom add-in programs to transfer data from a multidimensional data source to a spreadsheet or other analysis tool.