Programmer’s Guide - PivotTable Service

You can use PivotTable® Service in your custom applications to retrieve and manipulate multidimensional data from OLAP servers or local cube files, which may reference relational data sources. These custom applications typically perform the following functions:

1. Connect to an OLAP server running Microsoft® SQL Server™ OLAP Services or a relational database through PivotTable Service.
2. Create and save a local cube (optional).
3. Retrieve a dataset using a multidimensional expressions (MDX) query.
4. Display the resulting dataset in a custom viewer or browser.

The first, second, and fourth steps are described in the following topics. For information about retrieving a dataset using an MDX query, see Building an MDX Query.