Developer's Guide (Analysis Services - Data Mining)

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services supports XML for Analysis (XMLA) as a protocol for communication with client applications. Additional commands are supported by Analysis Services that extend the XML for Analysis 1.1 specification.

You can create and modify data mining objects entirely in XMLA scripts, and run prediction queries against the models programmatically from your own applications.

If you find that the built-in tools and viewers in Analysis Services do not meet your requirements, you can extend the power of Analysis Services by coding your own extensions. In this approach, you have two options:

• Because Analysis Services uses XMLA for data definition, data manipulation, and data control support, you can create mining structures and mining models by using the visual tools provided by Business Intelligence Development Studio, and then extend the data mining objects that you have created by using Data Mining Extensions (DMX) and Analysis Services Scripting Language (ASSL) scripts.

• Analysis Services also provides a complete framework that enables third-party data mining providers to integrate the data mining objects into Analysis Services.