Can I use TSQL to query an OLAP database or is MDX required?

I'm reading a little into data warehouses and OLAP DBs and it's a little unclear if I have to learn MDX to be able to query OLAP databases. Secondly, is开发者_运维百科 SSMS the tool used for querying?

SQL Server 2008 R2 (SSAS 2008)

You can query SSAS in SQL Server through an OPENROWSET query. Direct data access through SQL queries is not supported, or possible.

MDX querying in SSAS is done through SSMS. It is not possible to query an Analysis Services instance using TSQL.

Olap queries are quite different than relational SQL.

This book does a great job of explaining MDX:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/book.aspx?ID=12914&locale=en-us