Analyst Modeling Using Visual Studio (BI Workbench) And AS DB With Security Restrictions

Hello--

A question has come up around the following situation where a number of analysts will building data mining models in a specific analysis services databases.

- There is one AS DB for each modeling "project" and the analysts assigned to work on the "project" are grouped together in Windows Security Groups.

- The analysts are only allowed to access the AS DB for their project. To support this security model, we've implemented scripts to create the AS DB for the "project" and then a Role is created within the AS DB called "Administrator" and the members of this role are the members of the corresponding Windows Security Group.

The AS DB, role and membership are created by a machine "admin". After the AS DB is created, it appears that the only way an analyst can build models using Visual Studio (Business Intelligence Workbench) in the AS DB while maintaining the security model is to do the following:

- Run Visual Studio (or BI Workbench)
- Select File -> Open -> Analysis Services Database, then specify the database that they have access to.

In this "online" modeling environment, things are working fine. The question is -- is it possible for an analyst to create an Analysis Services Project in Visual Studio and "bind" it to already-created AS DB? This doesn't appear to work, but I may be missing something.

Thanks,
- Paul