Customer Reviews

Fast Track to MDX

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Reviews for this book seem to differ, mostly people think its great, but a few think its terrible. I think some people are buying the wrong book, so here is my attempt to help them to save their money.

This is a really bad book if you are expecting a detailed explanation on how to speed up complex MDX statements. It is a dreadful book if you want to see every function in MDX listed, this book only covers about a third of them. This is a terrible book of you are already familiar with MDX and are looking for a book to take that knowledge further. Do not waste your money on this book if that is what you want; this is the wrong book for you.

On the other hand, this is an excellent book if you know nothing about MDX and you are trying to learn it from scratch. It is a superb book if you want the basics explained clearly, in plain English, with multiple examples. It is a great book if you are currently confused by the basics of MDX and need to get up to speed quickly.

I started out wanting to know about MDX from scratch and I found it one of the best technical books that I have every read. I didn't find any of it repetitive or slow because I was having to absorb a whole load of new concepts and ideas. Sometimes the authors do explain something in more than one way, but then I need that.

Take `Tuple' for example, the authors explain it carefully, building up this complex idea bit by bit. Before I read this the book, I just couldn't get my head around the idea, now it all makes sense. But I'm sure that section would have seemed boring and repetitive if I had know all about tuples before I bought the book.

Which bring me back to the original point. This is both a great book and an awful book, it just depends where you are on the learning curve for MDX. The authors wrote it for those at the bottom. As someone who started at the bottom, I'm really grateful that they did. Don't buy it if you already know the basics, you'll be disappointed. If you don't know the basics of MDX, this is a must-have book.

One question that may be going through your mind as you read these reviews is "Should I buy this book or `MDX Solutions'?". I know that because that is what went through mine about three months ago as I read them.

In general, Fast Track is seen as the introductory book, Solutions as the expert's book. So I nearly skipped Fast Track and went directly to Solutions; I am so glad I didn't.

Fast Track is certainly the book to buy if you are new to MDX. It does a great job of introducing the language, it is excellently written by a set of true craftspeople - it is highly readable and, heaven help us, at times it is even amusing. This isn't like reading a text book, it is like sitting down with the guys who wrote it and having them tell you how MDX works.

Solutions is much less readable - we are talking about a typically stodgy reference book. But it does have a massive amount of information and that information is accurate and therefore highly useful.

So the easy answer is to buy both books, learn the basics from Fast Track and then use Solutions as a reference. And that is all I was initially going to write as my review. But I glanced back through Fast Track before I did so, looking back at it now as someone who now understands the language. And I was amazed at the amount of information that these guys cover. For example, MDX has about 150 functions in all, and Fast Track covers about 50 of them. Since they have carefully chosen the most commonly used ones, by the end of the book, you are familiar with most of the functions that you will ever need. And even better, you have enough background information to be able to understand the rest by reading the help system.

In addition they cover queries, expressions, calculated members, moving averages, distinct count, filters, colour coding, navigating the hierarchy, parent-child dimensions, member properties, security, the list goes on and on.

So, this is an introductory book in the sense that it assumes that you know nothing about MDX and introduces it gently. What is so subtle about the book is that it makes learning so easy, such fun, that you simply don't notice how much information these guys are pumping into your brain. Remember that Mosha Pasumansky invented MDX and he is one of the authors. He really does know what you really need in order to get started and up to speed.

So I still go with the notion that you need both books. Solutions is still a great reference book, but whatever else you do, start with Fast Track. In terms of useful information per unit cost, this is by far and away the best technical book I have ever read.

If you are new to MDX, just get this book. I have a heavy SQL/Programming background (C,C++, C# )and was having a hard time grasping MDX. The manuals don't do justice. Also it is hard to learn MDX from Analysis Services. Am from the old school that likes to type out commands to see results and both the Proclarity tool that comes with it and the Microsoft Sample Application are good to try out the examples. In particular i like the way that tuples and set are explained; clear examples and very easy reading. Also covered well are dimensions,measures, members, cells, heirarchies and aggregations. As is true with most complex topics in maths and computer science fine introductory books that are interesting and drive home concepts are rare. This is one such book. The concepts almost flow out of the author and into your brain !! Am almost at the end of the book. Took me less than 2 weeks ( 1 chapter per day , 18 chapters in all ). With Yukon not too far off all SQL professionals must be familiar with MDX as it is going to be a key part of MSFT's BI offering. My thanks to the authors and would like to suggest that they come out with a sequel for advanced readers.

This book is just great! I have so far found MDX to be a very difficult language to understand; although I am fluent in SQL. The problem was that I didn't know enough about the basics, so I couldn't get over that initial learning curve.

The huge strength of this book is not that it is the definitive work on MDX; the authors are very clear about this - that is not what they intended to wrote. What they wanted to write was a book that made it easy for people to get started with the language - hence the word 'FastTrack' in the title. And they have succeeded superbly. As I read this book, the whole way in which MDX works seemed to crystallize in my mind; suddenly it all made sense. Now I find it really easy to write MDX expressions, which is making my job so much easier! I totally recommend this book if you have been finding MDX difficult to understand.

This book does what it says on the cover. And it does it very well.

It takes you quickly and clearly through the basic concepts of OLAP cubes and the terminology.
It introduces the structure of the MDX language then gets you to
understand the usage through clear examples.

The best thing about the Authors' style is that the examples build up from the question

"what do I want to do?" and end up with the line of code. I like this style. I prefer to learn how to tackle a problem than buying a book with a long list of solutions.

The latter chapters introduce you to the advanced concepts and features, again with good examples.

The book doesn't tell you how to sit down at SQL analysis services or Cognos Transformer and create a cube. It doesn't teach you to be a master of any of the OLAP clients.

It does give you a basic understanding of how OLAP servers and clients work and, if you understand what is under the hood, you can see how to tackle your own problems, start to build your own solutions and get more from your data.

This is not one of those big, every function and every option reference books.

This is a very readable book that will help you understand the subject.

This book has big fonts, many screenshots and not many pages. Yet it goes about its subject matter very slooowly. Verbose and lack of clear concept explanation is abundant. For example, the authors need about 7 lines to explain to us how to pronounce "tuple". And this in such a short book.

Simple but tricky issues like calculation of weighted averages are ignored. Because of the verbose, basic topics are only treated very late in the book. For example, calculated measures are only treated in page 72 and the book only has about 260 pages. Lengthy explanations that don't say more than what a few well-written sentences would convey is the rule. Worse: some of these explanations may be misleading to a novice. Much said but little done. This may be the reason why neither a preview nor an online search of the book are available in Amazon.com.

I know that MDX is hard to learn because it looks like SQL but yet it is so different and there are many new concepts behind. But this "fast" track will rather mislead a reader into thinking he/she is at all on track.

While the book is a good introduction to MDX, as a developer I felt the book was too centered on a DBA's needs. The majority (from Ch. 5 through Ch. 17) concentrates on creating Calculated Members using the SQL Management Studio, as well as the various Wizards therein. While I can see this as being beneficial to the DBA while setting up the Cubes, a Calculated Member is just a small subset of what is involved in MDX. I was able to skip over the chapters pertaining to Security, Cell Colors and Actions without the worry of missing anything as it pertains to retrieving data from a Cube, to be presented to a user for analysis (unfortunately, only a couple of chapters cover the "query" aspect of MDX). I would have liked to see more complex query examples given and broken down; I'm sure there is more to MDX queries, even at an introductory level, than the basic SELECT...FROM...WHERE statements given.

That said, the explanation of terms (tuples, sets, members, etc) at the beginning were extremely helpful for a beginner such as myself. The author covers a great deal of functions, however I think some of the descriptions were too simplistic for the intended audience(OLAP developers, DBAs and power OLAP users; in other words, people that have experience with basic functions like SUM and AVG, in either Excel, SQL QA, etc.).

Also, a note for Kindle readers: The Kindle edition is the 1st Edition, even though the Product Details states 2nd Edition (October 15, 2005). The Kindle version is copyright 2002 and later reprinted in 2004, no 2 ed. mentioned. I didn't realize until it was too late...thanks, Amazon!

This is one of only two books on MDX available. Since I purchased this book, which is certainly dated, the new version of MDX Solutions by George Spofford et. al. has shipped. I haven't read it yet though I have it on order. This one was not written for Analysis Services 2005; however, the basic syntax of MDX has remained the same. If you are completely new to MDX and need a book to walk you through the basics of MDX then this book is decent. Nothing spectacular, but decent. It's easy to read and pretty fast to go through as well. Then again, you don't have much choice! If you are going to be doing a lot of MDX then like me you probably want to buy both books. One note, my copy of this book has several pages in the back that are almost completely white. It wasn't printed properly. As far as I know a new edition of this book is not coming anytime soon.

I have read quite a few technical books in my lifetime on topics ranging from computers to electrical and mechanical engineering, but this is the absolute best technical text I have ever seen. Admittedly this is a beginner's book, but the way complex topics of MDX are presented is nothing short of amazing. Other authors should really learn from Mark Whitehorn and Co. I only whish they wouldn't stop here and write and advanced text on MDX. In the meantime we are stuck suffering through "MDX Solutions".

I have read and found "Fast Track to MDX" to be easier to read and understand. There are many charts, diagrams, documentations and pictures to help the reader. I have tried many of the MDX statements in the book with success. The book has explained many things in a very understandable way, including Lead, Lag, Filter, IIF, Distinct Count, Count, Member Properties, Current Member, Previous Member, Syntax usage and more. Also, to my amazement, the CD included is ProClarity v5. ProClarity is a very good tool compared to other viewers and very user friendly and powerful. This book is good for both the beginner and intermediate users.

TC