Professional Microsoft® SQL Server® Analysis Services 2008 with MDX

11.4. COM UDFs versus .NET Stored Procedures

.NET stored procedures have the big advantage that you get better integration with the Analysis Services server via ADOMD Server and AMO. You also get the added protection of code access security and the easier development of .NET languages with .NET stored procedures.

Analysis Services supports COM UDF primarily for backward compatibility because there might be several existing applications using it in production. If you are migrating your Analysis Services 2000 databases containing COM UDFs to Analysis Services 2008 using the migration wizard and need existing applications to utilize UDFs, we recommend using the COM UDFs. If you are very passionate about COM UDFs, you can develop your UDFs as COM libraries. However, COM UDF support is being deprecated in Analysis Services 2008, which means that the support for COM UDFs might not be available in future versions.

Even if you have VB6 COM UDFs in your Analysis Services implementation, you might be able to port these to .NET using VB.NET. We highly recommend that you use .NET languages for UDFs. Analysis Services 2008 has been architected to leverage the .NET Framework and provides developers with the best aspects of .NET languages, such as the memory management and garbage collection technology provided by .NET languages coupled with code access security settings for the assemblies provided by Analysis Services 2008. If you are already familiar with .NET languages, that is great. If ...