This is often a local development machine and has nothing to do with the server
on which the cubes will reside. This means that work can be done offline, without
requiring a connection to the actual server that will be running the project. Later, the
project will be published to a server where the cube will reside.
Figure 3-6 The New Project dialog box shows the beginning of the creation of a project
that will eventually hold cubes, dimensions, mining models, and other objects.
C h a p t e r 3 : D a t a W a r e h o u s i n g a n d B u s i n e s s I n t e l l i g e n c e 51
The next step in the process is to add one or more data sources. A data source
represents a connection to one or more sources of data for the cube. Often, there is a
single data source, which points to the star schema as was described in the previous
section. The star schema is supposed to the single source of information for the cube,
so it makes sense that this would be the only connection. In some cases, however,
customers may have multiple data sources, and these sources might store their data
in different formats. For example, some of the data may be in SQL Server with
additional data in Microsoft Access and Oracle.
There are many options when it comes to setting up data sources, including the
specific provider to use and the different types of security. These issues are beyond
the scope of this particular book, although security will be revisited in Chapter 8. For
the rest of this discussion, there will be a single data source that has been set up to a
relational data warehouse hosted in SQL Server.
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