Many SQL Server developers eagerly anticipate the long-
awaited release of SQL Server 2005, formerly code-
named "Yukon." Major goals for Business Intelligence (BI) 
in the 2005 release are better integration of the somewhat 
loosely-coupled BI components of SQL Server 2000, provide 
enterprise reporting capability in the form of Reporting 
Services, and enable faster and easier development 
of "pervasive" BI, which can reach people at every level of 
the organization. To achieve these goals, each existing 
component of the SQL Server suite has been changed or 
replaced in the 2005 release. Reporting Services, 
originally slated to debut as a new component of SQL Server 
2005, has recently been released independently—but remains 
an integral component of the SQL Server 2005 vision.

SQL Server BI developers are well-advised to learn as much 
as possible about these changes and to start planning how 
to capitalize on them. This article focuses on some of the 
most basic differences between the 2000 and Beta 1 2005 
versions of Analysis Services, and addresses these 
differences in three overlapping areas:

User Interface 
Architecture 
Programming 
Beyond these three major areas, there are many other 
changes in Analysis Services 2005 (AS 2005) that are 
outside the scope of this article. I've listed (but not 
discussed) these at the end of this article. Also not 
covered but worth noting are enhancements to Transact-SQL 
in SQL Server 2005 itself which help facilitate BI 
analysis. For more information, you can find details on all 
the changes in this Microsoft whitepaper.

Keep in mind that the SQL 2005 version discussed in this 
article is still in beta; therefore nothing should be 
regarded as finalized.

User Interface
Analysis Services 2000 (AS 2000) developers use Analysis 
Manager 2000 (AM 2000) to create and manage OLAP (Online 
Analytical Processing) cubes. They also use the SQL Server 
2000 tools Query Analyzer and Enterprise Manager to develop 
the relational star schemas on which the OLAP cubes are 
based, and the Extract Transform and Load (ETL), in the 
form of stored procedures and Data Transformation Services 
(DTS), to load them. In AS 2000, these three tools are 
independent, the user experience is inconsistent, and it is 
almost impossible to establish development standards.

AS 2005 incorporates the functionality of those three 
former tools into two new tools hosted by the Visual Studio 
2005 IDE, "BI Workbench" and "SQL Workbench." You use BI 
Workbench—like AM 2000—to create and manage cubes; however, 
unlike AS 2000, BI Workbench also includes design 
capabilities for DTS (found in Enterprise Manager in SQL 
Server 2000) and Reporting Services. SQL Workbench merges 
the functions of both Query Analyzer and Enterprise Manager 
as well as some of the administrative functions of AM 2000.

The AM 2000 experience has characteristics such as:

The user must explicitly connect to an existing Analysis 
Services Server before any other tasks are possible. Each 
AS server registered with AM 2000 appears as an object. 
The object of coarsest grain is the database, a collection 
of related connection definitions, cubes, shared 
dimensions, data-mining models, and roles. The database, 
archived as a CAB file, is the fundamental unit of 
deployment between AS servers. 
Cubes must be based on a single fact table at the center of 
a star or snowflake schema, which is created and populated 
using other tools. 
Building a cube is a manually-intensive process, even using 
the cube wizard. 
Analysis Services 2000 stores metadata in either an Access 
or SQL Server database.