Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS)

Introduction to SQL Server Analysis Services
Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) delivers online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining functionality for business intelligence applications. Analysis Services supports OLAP by letting you design, create, and manage multidimensional structures.
The basic concepts of OLAP(online analytical processing)?
The basic idea of OLAP is fairly simple. Let’s think about that book ordering data for a moment. Suppose you want to know how many people ordered a particular book during each month of the year.
Defining a Data Source
To define a data source, you’ll use the Data Source Wizard. You can launch this wizard by right-clicking on the Data Sources folder in your new Analysis Services project.
Defining a Data Source View
A data source view is a persistent set of tables from a data source that supply the data for a particular cube.
Creating SSAS Project
Creating an Analysis Services Project and Defining a Data Source View within an Analysis Services Project
Definning Cube and its Dimension
You can define a cube and its dimensions in a single pass using the Cube Wizard. Alternatively, you can define one or more dimensions and then use the Cube Wizard to define a cube that uses those dimensions.
Adding Attributes to Dimensions
In the following tasks, you will use Dimension Designer to add attributes to the Customer and Product dimensions.
Reviewing Cube and Dimension Properties
After you have defined a cube, you can review the results by using Cube Designer. In the following task, you review the structure of the cube in the Analysis Services Tutorial project.
Deploying Analysis Services Project
Deploying an Analysis Services project creates the defined objects in an instance of Analysis Services.
Browsing the Deployed Cube
In the following task, you browse the Analysis Services Tutorial cube.
Defining Administrative Roles
After you install an instance of Analysis Services, all members of the Administrators local group are members of the Analysis Services Server role in that instance and have server-wide permissions to perform any task within the instance of Analysis Services.