Microsoft SQL Server released Analysis Services in 2000 as an OLAP cube tool. This tool is a mature service of Microsoft technologies in BI that provides the ability to develop cubes and create dimensions and measures. Creating hierarchies (such as the product category hierarchy) based on attributes of dimensions are also possible within SSAS.
Microsoft introduced a new language named MDX to query the SSAS cube. This querying language has the ability to query cube-structured data and work with hierarchies. Also, many Microsoft-reporting and dashboard tools support this language.
Bottom of text cut off BI Semantic Model (BISM) in SQL Server 2012. BISM is the data modeling layer between the source database/data warehouse and the data visualization layer. There are two methods for modeling data in BISM, of which SSAS Multidimensional will be covered in this chapter and SSAS Tabular will be covered in the next chapter.
Take a look at the following...