OLAP Services works with other components and programs to ensure enterprise-level robustness.
Microsoft® SQL Server™ OLAP Services includes a graphical administration tool called the OLAP Manager. This is a snap-in to Microsoft Management Console (MMC). As such, it provides a common framework and user interface for defining, accessing, and managing OLAP servers and databases. You can use multiple snap-in components in MMC; for example, you can install SQL Server Enterprise Manager and other snap-in components along with the OLAP Manager.
Cube access is based on Microsoft Windows NT® security, providing integration with SQL Server via Windows NT user and group definitions.
A variety of OLE DB and ODBC data sources can be used for data warehouses, such as Oracle versions 7.3 and 8.0. You can use multiple sources at the same time.
User queries, metadata, and data are stored in the OLAP server’s cache. Cached query definitions and metadata make it possible to answer new queries by calculating answers from cached data rather than retrieving data from the disk.
Client applications connect to the OLAP server through the client-based PivotTable® Service component. Because PivotTable Service receives metadata with data from the server in response to a query, it can often use data in the client cache to calculate the answer to subsequent queries without sending a new query to the server. For example, if the client cache contains values for the four quarters of a specific year and the user asks for the total for the same year, PivotTable Service calculates the answer from the cached data.
PivotTable Service shares much of the same functionality as the server, enabling it to bring the server’s multidimensional calculation engine, caching features, and query management directly to the client computer. This client/server data management model optimizes performance and minimizes network traffic.