Included are a few of my favorite things about the new OLAP Server (for SAS 9.2 EBI Installations).
- Export/Import via SAS spk file
The .spk files are packages that contain everything needed to export from Development and import into Production. This is an IDEAL way to reduce dev-test-prod interactions on the physical proc olap .sas code.
- Cube Jobs automatically created to refresh
This provides the ability to refresh the cubes without recreating the metadata or doing any .sas code editing before scheduling. (Note that there is one bug that is fixed in the TS2M2 maintenance release.)
- Impact Analysis on a Cube
Impact analysis is a big deal as this allows you to view the relationships between elements metadata. Data Integration Server/Studio folks use this all the time. Now you can do the same on Cubes!
- Incremental Cube Updates
Data just can't be refreshed over the weekend, you want it now! And look, with the 9.2 system you can update the cubes LIVE! No reason to disconnect all the users from the cube or OLAP Server to perform updates. No reason to create complex change mgmt programs to switch apps from one OLAP cube to another for business hour refreshes to occur. This is probably my BIG favorite on all the changes in OLAP Server!
Reference: What's New http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/whatsnew/62435/HTML/default/titlepage.htm
