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 to 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.
It provides readers with insight into the best practices for designing and building Microsoft analysis Services 2008 cubes. It also gives details about server architecture, performance tuning, security, and the administration of an Analysis Services solution.
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.
What you will learn from this book:
- Model dimensions, and measure groups in BI Development Studio
- Learn to deploy, monitor, and performance-tune your cube
- Build a data mart suitable for use with Analysis Services
- Use the Dimension Wizard and the Dimension Editor to build 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
- Automate processing and partition creation
- Monitor your cube to see who's actually using it
