AdventureWorks Database Download 2012 Log File

SQL Server provides a feature called OPENQUERY that enables us to interface with SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) cubes without directly connecting to the SSAS database. Instead, we can use SQL Server as a proxy to run MDX queries on the SSAS cube database. This approach is shown in our architecture.

One of the challenges in working with SSAS OLAP cube databases is that it requires using Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) to query the necessary data. However, this can be overcome by creating views that flatten the three-dimensional OLAP cube data into a two-dimensional table structure form. This allows us to access the data using standard SQL statements and traditional JDBC clients such as AWS Glue.

To address the challenges of securely exposing OLAP cubes over HTTP and performance issues with MDX queries, we can use SQL Server views to access data from the SSAS OLAP cube database. Additionally, third-party connectors are available for interfacing with an SSAS OLAP cube, but they add to the overall cost.

When analyzing large amounts of data on AWS Cloud, it is often necessary to directly interface with the SQL data sources. However, this can result in performance degradation and high costs. To overcome these challenges, we can use AWS Cloud tools such as Amazon SageMaker notebooks or Amazon EMR notebooks for data analysts and data scientists to analyze data at scale.

In this post, we will demonstrate how to connect to an SSAS OLAP cube database using standard SQL statements and traditional JDBC clients such as AWS Glue. We will also show how to use SQL Server views to access data from the SSAS OLAP cube database and overcome the challenges of securely exposing OLAP cubes over HTTP.

The following diagram illustrates our architecture for addressing these challenges:

By using this approach, we can easily extract data from an online analytical processing (OLAP) cube database such as Microsoft SQL Server with SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS). Additionally, AWS Glue is a fully managed service that makes it easier to extract, transform, and load (ETL) data for analytics.

Adventureworks database download 2012 log file