Security, for an Analysis Services cube is a very important issue and one that needs to be properly understood and implemented. It's almost always the case that some form of security needs to be in place: the data in the cube may be extremely sensitive. For example, if a cube contains sales data for a whole company, we may need to make sure that each sales person can only look at his or her own sales and no one else's; equally, if a cube contains data regarding the profitability of a company, it's likely we'll need to ensure that only the finance department and the board have access to it.

Ignoring security during the initial analysis phase will inevitably lead to problems during the deployment of the solution. We can't stress this enough: security must be planned for in advance; it is such a complex issue that it cannot simply be left until the cube is in production.

In this chapter, we will discuss the Analysis Services security model, exploring the different...