Execute Stored Procedures to SQL Analysis Services in BizTalk

Stored procedures implement SQL Analysis Services actions that cannot be represented as SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements. This article shows how to generate a schema for a stored procedure. You can use the schema to execute the stored procedure from a send port.

Add the Adapter to Your Project

Use the Add Adapter wizard to add the adapter to a BizTalk Server project in Visual Studio. The adapter will return metadata about the inputs of the stored procedure and its results. This metadata is needed to create the schema.

1. Right-click on the project in the Solution Explorer and click Add -> Add Generated Items.
2. Select Add Adapter Metadata in the resulting dialog box.
3. In the resulting Add Adapter wizard, select the adapter from the list.
4. In the Port menu, leave the selection blank. Or, select a receive location or send port that has been configured to use the SQL Analysis Services Adapter.

5. On the Connection String page, enter authentication credentials and other connection properties if they were not already configured in the send port or the receive location.

   Below is a typical connection string:

   User=myuseraccount;Password=mypassword;URL=http://localhost/OLAP/msmdpump.dll;

   To connect, provide authentication and set the Url property to a valid SQL Server Analysis Services endpoint. You can connect to SQL Server Analysis Services instances hosted over HTTP with XMLA access. See the Microsoft documentation to configure HTTP access to SQL Server Analysis Services.

   To secure connections and authenticate, set the corresponding connection properties, below. The data provider supports the major authentication schemes, including HTTP and Windows, as well as SSL/TLS.

   • HTTP Authentication

     Set AuthScheme to "Basic" or "Digest" and set User and Password. Specify other authentication values in CustomHeaders.

   • Windows (NTLM)

     Set the Windows User and Password and set AuthScheme to "NTLM".

   • Kerberos and Kerberos Delegation

     To authenticate with Kerberos, set AuthScheme to NEGOTIATE. To use Kerberos delegation, set AuthScheme to KERBEROSDELEGATION. If needed, provide the User, Password, and KerberosSPN. By default, the data provider attempts to communicate with the SPN at the specified Url.

   • SSL/TLS:

     By default, the data provider attempts to negotiate SSL/TLS by checking the server's certificate against the system's trusted certificate store. To specify another certificate, see the SSLServerCert property for the available formats.

   You can then access any cube as a relational table: When you connect the data provider retrieves SSAS metadata and dynamically updates the table schemas. Instead of retrieving metadata every connection, you can set the CacheLocation property to automatically cache to a simple file-based store.

   See the Getting Started section of the CData documentation, under Retrieving Analysis Services Data, to execute SQL-92 queries to the cubes.

Generate the Schema

After you enter connection properties in the Add Adapter wizard, the Schema wizard is displayed.

1. On the next page, Schema Information, select the Send Port that you have configured to use the SQL Analysis Services Adapter.
2. If you have configured the CData SQL Analysis Services Adapter in a solicit-response send port, disable the One-Way option.
3. In the Command Type menu, select Stored Procedure.
4. Select the stored procedure from the menu and enter the values for the input parameters.
5. Confirm the settings in the summary displayed by the wizard and click Finish to generate the schema.xsd file.

Processing Schemas

To use schemas in a simple BizTalk application, see the tutorial.