Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services (SSAS) delivers online analytical
processing (OLAP) and data mining functionality for business intelligence
applications. Analysis Services supports OLAP by letting we design, create, and
manage multidimensional structures that contain data aggregated from other data
sources, such as relational databases. For data mining applications, Analysis
Services lets we design, create, and visualize data mining models that are
constructed from other data sources by using a wide variety of industry-standard
data mining algorithms.
Analysis Services is a middle tier server for analytical processing, OLAP, and Data
mining. It manages multidimensional cubes of data and provides access to heaps
of information including aggregation of data. One can create data mining models
from data sources and use it for Business Intelligence also including reporting
features.
Analysis service provides a combined view of the data used in OLAP or Data
mining. Services here refer to OLAP, Data mining. Analysis services assists in
creating, designing and managing multidimensional structures containing data
from varied sources. It provides a wide array of data mining algorithms for specific
trends and needs.
Some of the key features are:
Ease of use with a lot of wizards and designers.
Flexible data model creation and management
Scalable architecture to handle OLAP
Provides integration of administration tools, data sources, security, caching,
and reporting etc.
Provides extensive support for custom applications.