Programming Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2008

Perspectives

As we mentioned earlier, one hallmark of Analysis Services post-version-2000 is its flexibility and accommodating nature. For example, the ability to have drillthrough actions, role-playing dimensions, and multiple fact tables allows you to use a single cube for a multitude of multidimensional and relational queries. With Analysis Services 2000, each fact table required its own cube, role-playing dimensions did not exist, drillthrough functionality was much more limited, and the lack of proactive caching meant that cube data could not be as fresh as is sometimes necessary.

This notion of a single cube acting as a one-stop shop for all your dimensional data gives rise to an Analysis Services 2005/2008 concept called the unified dimensional ...