Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Analysis Services provides a wide range of online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining functionality. As it is also designed to be very flexible and extensible, you can also add third-party services and packages, such as data mining algorithm providers, to extend the capabilities of Analysis Services even further. However, with a wide range of functionality comes a wide range of complexity, and Analysis Services provides a complex and robust set of OLAP and data mining features.

To access such a rich, extensible, wide-ranging set of features in a simple, straightforward fashion, the Decision Support Objects (DSO) library supplies a hierarchical object model for use with any development environment that can support Component Object Model (COM) objects and interfaces, such as Microsoft Visual C++®, Microsoft Visual Basic®, and Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition.

One of the features of the DSO object model, discussed in another topic, is the use of the MDStore interface. This shared interface allows development environments that use late binding, such as Visual Basic Scripting Edition, to easily support such a complex hierarchical model. The MDStore interface is used in DSO by objects that supply functionality for databases, cubes, partitions, and aggregations in Analysis Services. For more information about the MDStore interface, see MDStore Interface.