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

Managing security


So far, we have only discussed how to set up security from the point of view of the developer. However, once the roles have been defined, security will still need to be managed: new users will appear, some users will disappear, and users may change which roles they are members of.

This task is not generally managed by the developers of the Analysis Services cube, it is usually handled by someone else such as a network administrator or a DBA whose job it is to look after the cube once it has gone into production. So, the question is: how should these people add new users to a role? The answer should not be that they need to open BI Development Studio or SQL Management Studio and edit the roles directly. If we have followed our rule to only add Windows groups as role members, then it will be possible to add or remove users purely by adding and removing these members from domain groups. This will mean that whoever is managing security will not need administrative access to...