Product Description

• Written by the lead developers of Analysis Services at Microsoft, this book begins with an overview showing how Analysis Services and MDX can be used to build data warehouses and multidimensional databases
• The authors then describe the development processes for building dimensions and cubes from various data sources
• Demonstrating a variety of techniques in real–world scenarios, the book shows how MDX can be used to query databases to provide sophisticated analysis of business problems
• Finally, the book explains how Analysis Services can be used with other components of SQL Server, including DTS, data mining, and Report Services, to provide comprehensive, end–to–end solutions

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #259040 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 864 pages

From the Back Cover
SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 provides you with the business intelligence platform needed to build full–scale, multidimensional databases. MDX is the query language used to extract information from those multidimensional databases. Analysis Services 2005 supports core business functions such as market analysis, budgeting and forecasting.

Written by members of the Analysis Services product team at Microsoft, this timely and authoritative book shows you how to use Analysis Services along with SQL Server components like Integration Services, Data Mining, and Reporting Services to provide comprehensive, end–to–end solutions. Ultimately you′ll learn to solve business problems by leveraging all the tools that SQL Server 2005 has to offer.

What you will learn from this book

• The development process for designing Unified Dimensional Models (UDM)
• Using to MDX to query databases and for sophicticated business analysis
• How to harness features such as multiple measure groups, BI wizards, Key performance indicators, and Actions
• How to integrate Analysis Services with other SQL Server 2005 components in order to provide the best possible end–to–end solutions
• How to manage and secure Analysis Services efficiently in support of your BI users
• How to optimize your design and/or scale Analysis Services to extract the best performance

Who this book is for

This book is for database and data warehouse developers and administrators interested in exploiting the power of BI and leveraging the SQL Server 2005 tool set.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real–world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

About the Author
Sivakumar Harinath was born in Chennai, India. Siva has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Chicago. His thesis title was: “Data Management Support for Distributed Data Mining of Large Datasets over High Speed Wide Area Networks.” Siva has worked for Newgen Software Technologies (P) Ltd., IBM Toronto Labs, Canada, and has been at Microsoft since February of 2002. Siva started as a Software Design Engineer in Test (SDET) in the Analysis Services Performance Team and is currently an SDET Lead for Analysis Services 2005. Siva’s other interests include high performance computing, distributed systems and high speed networking. Siva is married to Shreepriya and had twins Praveen and Divya during the course of writing this book. His personal interests include travel, games/sports (in particular, Chess, Carrom, Racquet Ball, Board games) and Cooking. You can reach Siva at sivakumar.harinath@microsoft.com

Stephen Quinn was born in San Luis Obispo, California. Stephen has a Masters degree (1988) in Cognitive Psychology from California State University, Chico and is scheduled to receive his Masters of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Washington, Seattle, in June 2006. Stephen is married to Katherine and is raising his daughter, Anastasia. He has been in most roles common to the R&D environment i.e., software developer, technical writer, technical support specialist and several quality assurance roles. Stephen has published some 20 articles in the magazines Byte, InfoWorld and Datamation. With 15+ years of software experience; Stephen has worked the last 8 years at Microsoft; most recently as a Technical Writer in SQL User Education and before that, for several years as Test Manager in the SQL Business Intelligence Unit. You can reach Stephen at srq@portfolioeffect.com.

Customer Reviews

Do not buy this book
This book uses the sample database that ships with SQL Server but that database has been changed since the book was written, so the examples in the book do not match up.

There are a number of cases where it says that if you do X in SQL Server then Y will happen, but it doesn't.

There are cases where it gives some example code, and then shows a result that would have been produced by different code which is confusing.

There is no distinction between general discussion and steps that you need to take to follow the examples, which makes them very hard to follow.

There are a number of errata.

I have raised these issues with Wrox who have referred them to the Authors but so far I have not received any reply. The only replies I have had are from other readers who are also struggling with this book.

I am so disappointed that I am going to buy a different book.

Not a bad book
After years of relational data management work, this book was my first introduction to Analysis Services. It did what few other texts have managed and explained clearly the purpose of both Data Warehousing and Analysis Services. For that reason I look favourable on it despite its shortcomings.

These shortcomings are (in no particular order):

- Index is not too good (true of most recent Wrox publications)
- Goes from very simple to very techical with nothing in between
- Doesn't provide a very good transition path from users with relational database experience
- Er...that's it

To be fair thought this is actually a very good reference, a not half-bad skimmers guide, and an excellent tutorial. If you work through all the chapters (in which case you're obviously not doing it for a living) then everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The chaps writing it seem to know everything so it can get a bit heavy sometimes though.

In any case, I've managed to attain a reasonable level of competency after 3 months on-the-job use so it can't be that bad.

Could/Should have been much much better
Personally I found the book hard to follow it seemed to go over simple areas in a lot of detail then the harder (more interesting stuff) was just skimmed over.....
Some examples with the financial functions would have been good, showing some real modelling of Data.