Chris Webb hits an interesting edge case with SQL Server Analysis Services Multidimensional:
Recently I was involved in troubleshooting a mysterious Analysis Services Multidimensional performance problem for a customer: the team worked out that certain queries run by certain users were extremely slow, and that these users were members of roles where dimension security was applied, but the amount of slowdown – queries going through the role were taking over 10 minutes compared to a few seconds when run as an administrator – was unlike anything I had seen before. It turned out that the cause was having the Enable Visual Totals box checked on every attribute on the dimension where security was applied, not just the attributes whose members were secured.
Read on for a reenactment of the problem.