Querying SSAS with SQL

I spent the better part of two days attempting to set up a SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) server as a linked server to a master database, with the chief goal of querying financial data for display through a ColdFusion web interface. My version of ColdFusion does not easily support an MSOLAP connection, but a little research turned up an ostensibly easy method for querying SSAS by way of normal SQL Server data source. Simply adding the data repository as a linked server failed spectacularly and produced a number of infuriating and worthless error messages, not limited to:

OLE DB provider "MSOLAP" for linked server "<servername>" returned message "An error was encountered in the transport layer.".

OLE DB provider "MSOLAP" for linked server "<servername>" returned message "The peer prematurely closed the connection.".