MDX with Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Analysis Services Cookbook, 3rd Edition

Over 70 practical recipes to analyze multi-dimensional data in SQL Server 2016 Analysis Services cubes

About This Book

• Updated for SQL Server 2016, this book helps you take advantage of the new MDX commands and the new features introduced in SSAS
• Perform time-related, context-aware, and business related-calculations with ease to enrich your Business Intelligence solutions
• Collection of techniques to write flexible and high performing MDX queries in SSAS with carefully structured examples

Who This Book Is For

This book is for anyone who has been involved in working with multidimensional data. If you are a multidimensional cube developer, a multidimensional database administrator, or a report developer who writes MDX queries to access multidimensional cube, this book will help you. If you are a power cube user or an experienced business analyst, you will also find this book invaluable in your data analysis. This book is for you are interested in doing more data analysis so that the management can make timely and accurate business decisions.

What You Will Learn

• Grasp the fundamental MDX concepts, features, and techniques
• Work with sets
• Work with Time dimension and create time-aware calculations
• Make analytical reports compact, concise, and efficient
• Navigate cubes
• Master MDX for reporting with Reporting Services (new)
• Perform business analytics
• Design efficient cubes and efficient MDX queries
• Create metadata-driven calculations (new)
• Capture MDX queries and many other techniques

In Detail

If you’re often faced with MDX challenges, this is a book for you. It will teach you how to solve various real-world business requirements using MDX queries and calculations.

Examples in the book introduce an idea or a problem and then guide you through the process of implementing the solution in a step-by-step manner, inform you about the best practices and offer a deep knowledge in terms of how the solution works. Recipes are organized by chapters, each covering a single topic. They start slowly and logically progress to more advanced techniques.

In case of complexity, things are broken down. Instead of one, there are series of recipes built one on top of another. This way you are able to see intermediate results and debug potential errors faster.

Finally, the cookbook format is here to help you quickly identify the topic of interest and in it a wide range of practical solutions, that is – MDX recipes for your success.

Style and approach

This book is written in a cookbook format, where you can browse through and look for solutions to a particular problem in one place. Each recipe is short, to the point and grouped by relevancy. All the recipes are sequenced in a logical progression; you will be able to build up your understanding of the topic incrementally.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Elementary MDX Techniques
Chapter 2: Working with Sets
Chapter 3: Working with Time
Chapter 4: Concise Reporting
Chapter 5: Navigation
Chapter 6: MDX for Reporting
Chapter 7: Business Analyses
Chapter 8: When MDX is Not Enough
Chapter 9: Metadata – Driven Calculations
Chapter 10: On the Edge