Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services details from bookadda

Microsoft's SQL Server Analysis Services 2008 is an OLAP server that allows users to analyze business data quickly and easily. However, designing cubes in Analysis Services can be a complex task: it's all too easy to make mistakes early on in development that lead to serious problems when the cube is in production. Learning the best practices for cube design before you start your project will help you avoid these problems and ensure that your project is a success. This book offers practical advice on how to go about designing and building fast, scalable, and maintainable cubes that will meet your users' requirements and help make your Business Intelligence project a success. This book gives readers insight into the best practices for designing and building Microsoft Analysis Services 2008 cubes. It also provides details about server architecture, performance tuning, security, and administration of an Analysis Services solution. In this book, you will learn how to design and implement Analysis Services cubes. Starting from designing a data mart for Analysis Services, through the creation of dimensions and measure groups, to putting the cube into production, we'll explore the whole of the development lifecycle. This book is an invaluable guide for anyone who is planning to use Microsoft Analysis Services 2008 in a Business Intelligence project. What you will learn from this book.

• Build a data mart suitable for use with Analysis Services
• Create and configure an Analysis Services project in Business Intelligence Development Studio
• Use the Dimension Wizard and the Dimension Editor to build dimensions
• Create measure groups and associate them with dimensions
• Add calculations to the cube, including implementing currency conversion and a date tool dimension
• Explore the security model, including dimension security and cell security, and implement dynamic security
• Tune queries to get the best possible performance
• Automate processing and partition creation
• Monitor your cube to see who's actually using it

Approach This is a practical tutorial for Analysis Services that shows readers how to solve problems commonly encountered while designing cubes, and explains which features of Analysis Services work well and which should be avoided. The book walks through the whole cube development lifecycle, from building dimensions, cubes and calculations to tuning and moving the cube into production. Who this book is written for This book is aimed at Analysis Services developers who already have some experience but who want to go into more detail on advanced topics, and who want to learn best practices for cube design.

About The Author:

Alberto Ferrari is a consultant and trainer for the BI development area with the Microsoft suite for Business Intelligence. His main interests are in the methodological approaches to BI development and he works as a trainer for software houses that need to design complex BI solutions. He is a founder, with Marco Russo, of the site www.sqlbi.com, where they publish whitepapers and articles about SQL Server technology. He co-authored the "SqlBI Methodology", which can be found on the SqlBI site. Chris Webb has been working with Microsoft Business Intelligence tools for almost ten years in a variety of roles and industries. He is an independent consultant and trainer based in the UK, specializing in Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services and the MDX query language. He is the co-author of "MDX Solutions for Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 and Hyperion Essbase", is a regular speaker at conferences, and blogs on BI at http://cwebbbi.spaces.live.com. He is a recipient of Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional award for his work in the SQL Server community. Marco Russo is a consultant and trainer in software development based in Italy, focusing on development for Microsoft Windows operating systems. He's involved in several Business Intelligence projects, including those of relational and multidimensional warehouse design, with particular experience in sectors like banking and financial services, manufacturing and commercial distribution.