Can we use the cube without deploying?

Question

I am new to SSAS and I have created an analysis services project but I don't have premission to deploy the solution on server. So, My question is Can we use cube data without deploying the solution for developing purposes or any other alternative.

Thanks,

Jagz W

Answer 1

No, you cant use the cube data without deploying it on your server. Inorder to use your cube, you must process your cube.

Answer 2

There is an alternative, but it will depend on certain conditions:

Offline cubes.

As stated on Local Cubes (Analysis Services) (search for it on technet) it can be created from a relational data source using an ASSL script (Analysis Services Scripting Language).

How? The basic outline is:

1. Deploy your cube. Just to generate the appropiate ASSL script. I imagine that if you do this once and understand how the ASSL script works, you could create it without deploying it.
2. Run the ASSL script in a program using AdomdClient.

The offline cubes would have certain drawbacks, it doesn't support all the features as the complete server based cubes, maybe the amount of data would be an issue as well, and all the hassle to do it.

I'd also used CubeSlice to get the ASSL script from step 1, but i'd seen that it can be extracted from the solution files with extra effort, and also from the deployed cube. You can check the following pages that roughly explains how this can be done:

Creating local cubes from relational data

Complete OLAP infraestructure without Microsoft Analysis Services

As I said this is an alternative that you could check into.