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Sort OLAP Metadata With ADO MD.NET
Learn which collections help make organizing metadata a snap.
by Andrew J. Brust

VSLive! San Francisco, February 9, 2005

Note: Andrew Brust is presenting "Advanced ADO.NET/ADO.NET 2.0" at C# Live! San Francisco, Wednesday, February 9. This tip is from that session.

Need to manipulate or display the structural content of your cube in addition to its data? ADO MD.NET will do the trick. It isn't only an API for running MDX queries. Using ADO MD.NET with Analysis Services 2005 is a great way to get all sorts of metadata from your cubes, including many of the new OLAP objects introduced in this latest version of the product.

These built-in collections make metadata discovery easy:

Dimensions
Measures*
Kpis*
NamedSets*
Hierarchies
AttributeHierarchies*

Note: Hierarchies and AttributeHierarchies are on the Dimension object, and the others are on the CubeDef object (collections not present in ADO MD "classic" have a * next to them).

For metadata not directly reflected in the ADO MD.NET object model, you still can use ADO MD.NET to discover your cube's treasures. Use the AdomdConnection object's GetSchemaDataSet method to get at almost anything, including Measure Groups, Calculated Members, and Actions.

If this isn't enough for you, consider using the Microsoft.AnalysisServices namespace. It's effectively the .NET/Yukon successor to SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services' DSO (Decision Support Objects) COM Library. With objects representing virtually everything your cubes can contain, this tool would let you create your own cube editor if you were so inclined.

About the Author
Andrew J. Brust is Chief of New Technology at Citigate Hudson Inc., a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner specializing in business intelligence and custom database applications built with .NET, SQL Server, and other Microsoft technologies. Andrew is Microsoft's regional director for New York/New Jersey, a contributing editor to Visual Studio Magazine, and a regular speaker and conference chair at VSLive!.