XML for Analysis (XMLA)—a Web-service standard proposed and supported by Microsoft and leading OLAP companies—brings together Web services and OLAP technologies by providing an XML schema for OLAP and data-mining applications. Essentially, XMLA lets you explore and query multidimensional data through Web services, which means analytical applications can move away from their expensive and difficult-to-maintain client/ server roots toward a more flexible, Web-based architecture.

XML...