| Change Description | When available | Link to more info |
| Real time best practice design warnings. The warnings are implemented in AMO, exposed in the UI via blue squiggly lines, and can be dismissed individually (a single occurrence) or turned off all together. To disable/re-enable build project and then in the warning window select warning message and right mouse click to choose to disable or enable. | 2007 June CTP | Blog |
| New dimension design wizard. | 2007 June CTP | |
| New cube design wizard. | 2007 November CTP | |
| Attribute relationship tab in dimension designer. Allows easier to define and understand attribute relationship. | 2007 June CTP | Blog |
| CREATE MEMBER syntax extensions to support defining caption, display folders and associated measure group. | 2007 July CTP | Blog |
| CREATE SET syntax extensions to support defining caption and display foders as well as the ability to define dynamic named sets. | 2007 July CTP | Blog |
| CREATE KPI command will be added | 2007 July CTP | Blog |
| Backup performance improvements. In SSAS 2005 backup time for big databases grew exponentially. In SSAS 2008 backup time grow is linear. Redesigned backup storage will remove backup size limists. | 2007 November CTP | Blog |
| Writeback to MOLAP. Analysis Services 2008 removes the requirement to query ROLAP partitions when performing writebacks, which results in huge performance gains. | 2007 November CTP | Blog Documentation Blog |
| Scale-out Analysis Services. A single read-only copy of an Analysis Services database can be shared between many Analysis Servers through a virtual IP address. This creates a highly scalable deployment option for an Analysis Services solution. | 2008 February CTP | Documentation Blog |
| UPDATE MEMBER new statement. The UPDATE MEMBER statement updates an existing calculated member while preserving the relative precedence of this member with respect to other calculations. Therefore, you cannot use the UPDATE MEMBER statement to change SOLVEORDER. An UPDATE MEMBER statement cannot be specified in the MDX script for a cube. | 2007 July CTP | Blog |
Execution plan persistence. SQL Server 2008 provides functionality to lock down query plans so that, to the maximum extent possible for correctness, the query plans survive server restart, server upgrade, and production deployments. This ensures consistent optimal performance of queries against SQL Server data. | Future CTP | Documentation |
A flexible caching model. With Analysis Services, you can control how data and aggregations are cached to optimize query performance while maintaining an acceptable level of latency between the cache and its underlying data store. | Future CTP | Documentation |
| Block computation. Block computation eliminates unnecessary aggregation calculations (for example, when the values to be aggregated are NULL) and provides a significant improvement in analysis cube performance, which enables users to increase the depth of their hierarchies and complexity of computations. | 2007 November CTP | Documentation |
| Aggregation Designer changes. Algorithm that builds aggregations will be improved, there will be support for manual edit/create/delete of aggregations and we should be able to see what aggregates were designed. Also aggregation designer will have built-in validations for optimal design assistance. | 2007 November CTP | Blog Blog Blog |
| Data Management Views (DMV).These DMVs will allow to write SELECT type statements against SSAS instance to get performance and statistics information. | 2007 November CTP | Blog Blog Blog |
| SSAS database attach/detach. | 2008 February CTP | Blog |
| Analysis Services Personalization Extensions. Analysis Services personalization extensions enable developers to create new Analysis Services objects and functionality and to provide these objects and functionality dynamically in the context of the user session. | 2007 July CTP | Blog |
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