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Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services

Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis ServicesAuthors: Marco Russo, Alberto Ferrari, Chris Webb
Publisher: Packt Publishing
Category: Book

List Price: $49.99
Buy New: $42.98
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Seller: Amazon.com
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars 9 reviews
Sales Rank: 31005

Media: Paperback
Pages: 360
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7.5 x 1

ISBN: 1847197221
Dewey Decimal Number: 005
EAN: 9781847197221
ASIN: 1847197221

Publication Date: July 15, 2009
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Product Description

Design and implement fast, scalable and maintainable cubes

  • A real-world guide to designing cubes with Analysis Services 2008
  • Model dimensions and measure groups in BI Development Studio
  • Implement security, drill-through, and MDX calculations
  • Learn how to deploy, monitor, and performance-tune your cube
  • Filled with best practices and useful hints and tips

In Detail

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.




Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 9



5 out of 5 stars interesting book, but take their opinions with grain of salt   February 14, 2010
Sam S (Needham MA)
Alberto Ferrari well known blog and famous paper on many-to-many revolution make his book a must read for anybody who is doing serious development with microsoft analysis services 2005 and 2008. still i would take some of their opinions with a grain of salt - eg they recommend to avoid parent-child dimensions as there many issues with them. this recommendation i disagree with as PC is the only mechanism to support unbalanced hierarchies and although you can go with natural hierarchies its quite a pain to maintain them. they dont cover MSAS end-to-end - more like each chapter has its own life. The book is not suitable for beginners, - rather Mosha's MSAS 2000 fast track to mdx explains many issues much better.

overall a very good book and delight to read with many interesting real-life observations



5 out of 5 stars May take you to the next level   February 10, 2010
Ron Davis (Plano, TX USA)
I have worked in BI for some time now and authored for Microsoft their best selling course on end to end BI for Microsoft Courseware Library, course number 50263 which introduces the entire stack of the Microsoft tools.
I had a client that asked where they could go now that they had the training and wanted to improve their cube designs and performance. I found this book and after reviewing it recommended that the client purchase it and use it to indeed take them to the next level.
The book has the word expert in the title and is not intended for a novice but as the authors say for the experienced BI developer. In reading it I had several, `I never thought of that perspective' moments which is exactly what I want form an expert book.
This should be on the bookshelf of every BI developer!



2 out of 5 stars Is not step-wise or visual in explanation...   December 8, 2009
Buddha Fever (Virginia)
1 out of 5 found this review helpful

Yeah, ok, it may be an 'expert' book however the author is a HORRIBLE explainer.

Don't even THINK that he follows a step-by-step approach to using these tools. Funny, at the beginning of the book he tells you that you will be using the Adventureworks db from MS. Then, does he follow step by step, with screen shots about how to get from point A to point B?? No...

Skip this book if you want to LEARN how to get this stuff up and going, even with a sample DB from MS.

This book is nothing but a lesson in frustration as most of the book is narrative with hardly a related screen shot to the required task.



5 out of 5 stars Good book with real-world experience   October 21, 2009
Tmac (Austin, TX)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I bought this book based on the good reviews. I wasn't disappointed. It's very concise in how it presents day-to-day usage of SSAS and describes techniques to model data and the desired aggregations. It's worth a second reading and the writing style is very good. It does not fall into the trap of being verbose ad nauseum like many technical books that try to target a wide audience. For anyone looking for another good book on SSAS, I recommend Teo Lachev's "Applied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 and Microsoft Business Intelligence Platform" which I consider to be better. Some things have changed (ex: member properties are now called attribute relationships), but the depth that Lachev has given to the subject is superior to any other book I've seen, including this one. I have not read any Wrox books on SSAS however.


5 out of 5 stars "Must have" book on any serious BI developer's desk!   October 16, 2009
cosmin ioan (Fort Lauderdale, FL, United States)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

Do not be fooled by the number of authors or apparent brevity of this book.
Even though the book was written by, admittedly, some of the top minds in the field, it is much more than that. The clever enterprising of the authors to generously sprinkle the book with links to tens of articles and white papers, applications of hands-on real-world scenarios, best practices, How-To's and gotcha's written by the brightest minds in the business as well as some of the top engineers at Microsoft would have otherwise increased the book size three or four fold. This coupled with the selfless assistance of the authors through the MSDN Analysis Services forums, LinkedIn or their own blogs, make this book one of the most valuable resources in the Microsoft BI/DW arena. A must-have book for any serious BI developer!


Showing reviews 1-5 of 9


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