September 2001 - XMLA Council was formed. First XMLA Council meeting happened.
November 2001 - Microsoft released ''XML for Analysis SDK'' - first reference implementation for XMLA 1.0
November 2002 - First Private XMLA interop event at Simba Technologies headquarters. XMLA 1.1 was released by XMLA Council.
March 2003 - Second Private XMLA interop event at Simba Technologies headquarters.
May 2003 - Public XMLA interop event at TDWI conference.
API
XMLA consists of only two SOAP methods. It was designed in such a way to preserve simplicity.
Execute
Discover
Execute
Execute method has two parameters:
Command - command to be executed. It can be MDX , DMX or SQL .
Properties - XML list of command properties such as Timeout, Catalog name etc.
The result of Execute command could be ''Multidimensional Dataset'' or ''Tabular Rowset''.
Discover
Discover method was designed to model all the discovery methods possible in OLEDB including various schema rowset, properties, keywords etc. Discover method allows to specify what needs to be discovered, the possible restrictions and properties.
The result of Discover method is a rowset.
QUERY LANGUAGE
XMLA specifies MDXML as the query language. In the XMLA 1.1 version, the only construct in MDXML is an MDX statement enclosed in the tag.
EXAMPLE
Below is an example of XMLA Execute request with MDX query in command.
SELECT Measures.MEMBERS ON COLUMNS FROM Sales
FoodMart Multidimensional TupleFormat
SESSION MANAGEMENT
XMLA has a notion of ''session state''. It is maintained through predefined '' SOAP headers''
BeginSession - to begin a new session
EndSession - to end existing session
UseSession - to use existing session. SessionId attribute previously returned for BeginSession should be used.
PRODUCTS
Products which support XMLA fall into two categories:
XMLA Providers - these products provide XMLA service. Typically these are server or middle tier products
XMLA Consumers - these products can connect to XMLA Providers and consume XMLA. Typically these are client/UI products
SimbaO2X - A standards-based ODBO to XMLA client-side driver, which supports all the major multi-dimensional standards – MDX, ODBO, XMLA.
SimbaProvider SDK - A SDK for creating custom OLE DB For OLAP (ODBO) and/or XML for Analysis (XMLA) connectivity to multi-dimensional and star-schema relational data sources.
