Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Analysis Services (SSAS) delivers online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining functionality for business intelligence applications. Analysis Services supports OLAP by letting us design, create, and manage multidimensional structures that contain data aggregated from other data sources, such as relational databases. For data mining applications, Analysis Services lets us design, create, and visualize data mining models that are constructed from other data sources by using a wide variety of industry-standard data mining algorithms.

Some of the key features are:

1. Ease of use with a lot of wizards and designers.

2. Flexible data model creation and management

3. Scalable architecture to handle OLAP

4. Provides integration of administration tools, data sources, security, caching, and reporting, etc.

5. Provides extensive support for custom applications

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1. In 2005 it's not possible to create an empty cube but in 2008 we can create an empty cube.
2. A new feature in Analysis Services 2008 is the Attribute Relationships tab in the Dimension Designer to implement attribute relationship is complex in SSAS 2005
3. We can create ONLY 2000 partitions per Measure Group in 2005 and the same limit of partitions is removed in 2008.

1. OLAP stands for On-Line Analytical Processing. It is a capability or a set of tools that enables the end-users to easily and effectively access the data warehouse data using a wide range of tools like                           MICROSOFT EXCEL, REPORTING SERVICES, and many other 3rd party BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE TOOLS. 
2. OLTP is used for analysis purposes to support day-to-day business decisions and is characterized by less frequent data updates and contains historical data. Whereas, OLTP (On-Line Transactional                    Processing) is used to support day-to-day business operations and is characterized by frequent data updates and contains the most recent data along with limited historical data based on the retention policy driven by business needs.

A-DATA SOURCE contains the connection information used by SSAS to connect to the underlying database to load the data into SSAS during processing. A Data Source primarily contains the following information (apart from various other properties like Query timeout, Isolation, etc.):

1. Provider
2. Server Name
3. Database Name
4. Impersonation Information

SSAS Supports both .Net and OLE DB Providers. Following are some of the major sources supported by SSAS: SQL Server, MS Access, Oracle, Teradata, IBM DB2, and another relational database with the appropriate OLE DB provider.