Using Decision Support Objects

You can use Decision Support Objects (DSO) in your applications to control the server and create and maintain OLAP objects. For information about the programming environments in which you can use DSO to create applications, see Programming Environment.

A common sequence of operations for an application using DSO is to:

Connect to an OLAP server.
Create a database object to contain dimensions and cubes.
Add a datasource that contains the data.
Create dimensions and their levels.
Create a cube and specify dimensions and measures.
Process a cube to load its structure and data.

These operations are described and illustrated using Microsoft® Visual Basic® code in Creating a Sample Program Using Decision Support Objects.

Considerations when using Decision Support Objects

When creating a program using Microsoft® SQL Server™ OLAP Services Decision Support Objects (DSO) there are certain limitations that must be observed when naming DSO objects. The following table lists characters that are not allowed.

Object	Invalid Characters
Server	Same as Microsoft Windows NT®
DataSource	: / \ * \| ? " () [] {} <>
Level	. , ; ' ` : / \ * \| ? " & % $ ! - + = [] {}
Dimension	, ; ' ` : / \ * \| ? " & % $ ! - + = () [] {}
Other Objects	. , ; ' ` : / \ * \| ? " & % $ ! - + = () [] {}

Note All DSO object names must begin with a letter. A dimension name may contain a single dot (.) within the name. This dot serves to separate the dimension name from the hierarchy name. For example, in “MyDim.Hier1” and “MyDim.Hier2”, “MyDim” is a dimension with two hierarchies, “Hier1” and “Hier2”.