I haven’t seen an “official” announcement, but Microsoft released betas of the XML for Analysis SDK and ADOMD.NET. XML for Analysis (XMLA) is “an open industry-standard web service interface designed specifically for online analytical processing (OLAP) and data-mining functions”. The XMLA SDK provides an XMLA compliant web service for SQL 2000 Analysis Services. ADOMD.NET provides a .NET library for accessing XMLA compliant web services.

I never have really gotten into Analysis Services, but I’ve wanted to. It’s always been a time issue – I just can’t focus on everything!

I didn’t notice, but the Advanced Networking Pack for WinXP was released last week. It’s available on Windows Update, or you can download it as well as the SDK from MSDN. The API is C based. That’s right. Not COM, not managed, not even C++ objects. Like I said about the RTC Client v1.2 API, this API is ripe for wrapping in managed code.