Microsoft are deprecating Native XML Web Services in SQL Server 2008, and if I understand the productmanagerese correctly, that means that they are abandoning XML for Analysis (XML/A) as an interface to Microsoft Analysis Services.

(I may be mistaken. Can someone who is closer to Microsoft's roadmap clarify how OLAP applications on non-Windows systems are supposed to access Microsoft Analysis Services?)

UPDATE, 2010/6/18 09:50 PDT: It turns out that I am mistaken, and I received several comments pointing this out. The real story is that Microsoft is deprecating native XML access to SQL Server (the relational database, not the OLAP server). I have left the rest of the blog post as I originally wrote it, but please read it in the light of the new evidence.

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