Calling an External Query from MDX

Recently, we had a client requirement to show SQL Server and DB2 data inside of a Excel Analysis Service pivot table. They didn’t want to create dozens of drill-through reports for the users to slice, sort and filter any number of ways and they wanted to tie the cube data to real-time OLTP data. For example, they wanted to look at a customer and then see an action that allows the user to see all the open orders for that customer.

To do that, we implemented a rowset action in Analysis Services. I’ll post a blog within a few days about how to do that piece but a key piece of this first is a custom assembly that had to be implemented into SSAS.