I have had a number of questions recently about Java and XMLA. People have asked if you need to know .NET to work with XMLA. The answer is that XMLA works in both the Java and the .NET worlds.
We have seen XMLA Providers built using .NET and IIS and we have seen XMLA Providers built using Java and JBoss. The nice part about XMLA and MDX is that they are not platform dependent. So, on the server side, yes, you can implement XMLA in both Java and .NET.
What about XMLA consumers? Again, the answer is that Java works well for XMLA consumers. In the .NET world, Microsoft has implemented ADOMD.NET which is an object framework to connect to Microsoft Analysis Services. Microsoft could just as easily have created ADOMD.J – i.e. a Java based object framework to connect to Microsoft Analysis Services. In fact, if you are interested in something like ADOMD.J, send me a comment, I would love to discuss further.
If you are interested in something like ADOMD.J... it already exists! olap4j (http://www.olap4j.org) is an open standard API for accessing OLAP data, and the olap4j specification is approaching beta.
olap4j is distributed under an open-source license, and drivers for mondrian and XMLA are under development, but that doesn't preclude commercial drivers. We encourage Simba to drop the idea for ADOMD.J, and participate in the olap4j process instead.
Julian Hyde
Posted by: Julian Hyde | September 17, 2007 at 10:51 AM