SQL Server Analysis Services is dying!

There have been a heap of announcements this week at the PASS summit for SQL Server. In particular, Microsoft have gone down the road of moving away from SSAS over the next few versions of SQL Server, in favour of using in-memory cubes with Powerpivot and it's new language, DAX.

This is really astounding. SSAS is the number one OLAP tool in the market. In fact, it's the number one selling OLAP tool for Oracle !

I understand that MDX was way too hard for people to learn, but Oracle made the same mistake years ago with Oracle Express. It had over 45% of the OLAP market, but decided to "put it in the database". It bombed and four years ago Oracle bought Hyperion Essbase to get back into the OLAP market. I hope Microsoft aren't making the same mistake.

More info has come to hand. Microsoft is not deprecating SSAS, but they won't be focusing as heavily on the SSAS UDM as they will the new powerpivot Business Intelligence Sematic Model.