Data Connectivity for External Users
Published on : May 19, 2019
I recently implemented the Business Intelligence Solution using Microsoft Products with our Customer who in the Public Sector. Here I am writing the challenges involved with the Microsoft Products that comes with the Integrated Windows Authentication. This works great when the client access is over Intranet or on the same domain as the data when comes to Analysis Services. But when the Client access is over internet or extranet connections, the data connectivity issues occur. To overcome the issue, I proposed the alternative means for connecting to Analysis Services.
The approach is to configure the HTTP Access to Analysis Services on IIS 8.0 and Set up an HTTP endpoint for accessing an Analysis Services instance. I enabled the HTTP access by configuring MSMDPUMP.dll, an ISAPI extension that runs in the Internet Information Services (IIS) and pumps data to and from client applications and an Analysis Services Server. The IIS and Analysis Services on different computers. I set the Basic authentication mode to enable which requires the user to provide the username and password. Edited the MSMDPUMP.INI file to set the target Analysis Server information.
On top of it, created the Batch file with run as a command that allows a user to run specific client tools under a different username to the one that was used to logon to a computer. By this alternative approach, the internet or extranet user executes the batch file to open the Microsoft Client tool to enter the extranet username and password which is different from the logon computer to connect to the analysis server through the data pump. This solution enables the external users to create or edit ad-hoc reports from the data pump providing the HTTP access to Analysis Services.