Remembering the Future

While the changes in Analysis Services a.k.a OLAP are not as dramatic as in other areas, the integration with Report Services and Web Services is going to make them an increasingly important part of an efficient data delivery system. In the past data warehousing required a lot of maintenance and extra vendor products. But now it is a fully integrated part of the MS family of data processing components. It is going to dramatically increase the efficiency of queries that aggregate across a large database of detailed information. It also presents a very easy to use interface to data analysts, so that they are no longer limited to static reports generated in batch. They can use drag and drop from within an application or excel spreadsheet to slice and drill down through there data without having to learn SQL and understand all the details of a complex data model. I had some issues concerning the security of alternative architectures, but found some one to answer my questions except for a couple of things concerning XMLA which allows thin client (browser only) access to analysis services using web services and XML.