In SQL Server Analysis Services 2005, you can create "perspectives" on cubes. What a perspective can do, is allow you hide different dimensions, measure groups and attributes. This works great but I still think there are a few things that are missing.

The first thing is that the cube itself is a perspective, one that is always there and you cannot hide. In a scenario where you want to build a cube but then have multiple perspectives, but you don’t want end user clients to see the main cube, or use the main perspective, you can’t do it, or at least I cannot find a way to do it. :)

The second thing is, which really is more to do with linked objects, is that when you link in a dimension, for instance, you cannot hide or show attributes, you are stuck with what is in the main dimension in your source cube. So what do you do? Use a perspective. But if SSAS let you hide attributes, etc on the dimension, it would let you forgo the use of perspectives.

The third thing is just security in general. You cannot secure a perspective. If you want Accounting to see XYZ perspective, and HR to see ABC perspective, but you don’t want them to see each other’s perspectives, you are out of luck, and need to come up with a new solution, which probably involves crazy security in your cube, or creating new cubes that link in dimensions and measure groups from the main cube.

Don’t get me wrong, SSAS 2005 is a vast improvement over SSAS 2000, but there are just a few things that I feel are missing, or , I might not know about how to enable some of the things I want to do. :) I know SSAS 2008 has more improvements and that will be a good change, hopefully there are some cool things that let you manage your cubes and perspectives a little better.