Book Image

Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services

Book Image

Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services

Overview of this book

Microsoft's SQL Server Analysis Services 2008 is an OLAP server that allows users to analyze business data quickly and easily. However, designing cubes in Analysis Services can be a complex task: it's all too easy to make mistakes early on in development that lead to serious problems when the cube is in production. Learning the best practices for cube design before you start your project will help you avoid these problems and ensure that your project is a success. This book offers practical advice on how to go about designing and building fast, scalable, and maintainable cubes that will meet your users' requirements and help make your Business Intelligence project a success. This book gives readers insight into the best practices for designing and building Microsoft Analysis Services 2008 cubes. It also provides details about server architecture, performance tuning, security, and administration of an Analysis Services solution. In this book, you will learn how to design and implement Analysis Services cubes. Starting from designing a data mart for Analysis Services, through the creation of dimensions and measure groups, to putting the cube into production, we'll explore the whole of the development lifecycle. This book is an invaluable guide for anyone who is planning to use Microsoft Analysis Services 2008 in a Business Intelligence project.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

Administrative security


Administrative permissions can be granted at two levels in Analysis Services: at the server level and at the database level. To become an Analysis Services server administrator, a user must be a member of the special, server-wide Administrators role. Users can be added to this role when Analysis Services is installed, or by right-clicking on an instance in the Object Explorer pane in SQL Management Studio, selecting Properties on the right-click menu, and going to the Security page in the Analysis Services Properties dialog. Server administrators have no restrictions on what they can do; also, certain tasks, such as creating databases, can only be performed by server administrators. As a result it's likely that we'll have to be a member of this role while we're developing our cube.

Database-level administrative permissions are granted in the database roles we've just been introduced to in the preceding sections. By checking the Full Control box on the General tab...