ORMs are to RDBMSs as xxx is to OLAP cubes? Does xxx exist?

Question

Is there an ORM-analogue for querying OLAP cubes / data-warehouses? I'm specifically interested in the .NET world, but generally interested in anything ;-)

Answer 1

ADOMD will let you roll your own. I haven't seen any good libraries that sit on it and provide an easy API for result sets, perhaps due to the nature of Analysis Services and MDX?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms123483.aspx

I've looked for better, so I'm all ears if anyone has any solutions. Currently for quick development I'm using SQL Server to send MDX queries through a linked server to SSAS, then returning that as stored procedure output from SQL Server, as anyone can then deal with that. Problems I encountered were the lack of debugging, and if the rows are missing it errors, so TRY/CATCH for specific error numbers and a rethrow if not.

Answer 2

I've started an open source project, Kona, to wrap the ADOMD.Net lib, and try to bring ADOMD.Net into the 21st Century. You can get it up at http://www.codeplex.com/kona, but it does need some more love and attention.

The task of converting lambdas to MDX isn't a small one, so I haven't even tried to to that, yet. I've tried to encourage MSFT to write a LINQ to MDX provider, but considering how few .Net developers are actually trying to work with OLAP/SSAS (outside of the SSRS space), I don't think it will be high on anyone's priority list at the moment. But that doesn't mean to stop trying. I've been doing my "BI for the .Net Guy" talk at the local user groups and Code Camps, trying to spread the love.