Professional Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services 2008 with MDX [Paperback]

Sivakumar Harinath (Author), Robert Zare (Author), Sethu Meenakshisundaram (Author), Matt Carroll (Author), Denny Guang-Yeu Lee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 16, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0470247983 | ISBN-13: 978-0470247983 | Edition: 1

• When used with the MDX query language, SQL Server Analysis Services allows developers to build full-scale database applications to support such business functions as budgeting, forecasting, and market analysis.
• Shows readers how to build data warehouses and multi-dimensional databases, query databases, and use Analysis Services and other components of SQL Server to provide end-to-end solutions
• Revised, updated, and enhanced, the book discusses new features such as improved integration with Office and Excel 2007; query performance enhancements; improvements to aggregation designer, dimension designer, cube and dimension wizards, and cell writeback; extensibility and personalization; data mining; and more

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

The new features of Analysis Services 2008 make it even easier to use andbuild your databases for efficient and improved performance. This authoritative book, written by key members of the Analysis Services product team at Microsoft, explains how to best use these enhancements for your business needs. The authors provides you with valuable insight on how to use Analysis Services 2008 effectively to build, process, and deploy top-of-the-line business intelligence applications.

You'll explore everything that Analysis Services 2008 has to offer and examinethe important features of this product with the help of step-by-step instructionson building multi-dimensional databases. Within each chapter, you will not only learn how to use the features, but you'll also discover more about the features at a user level and what happens behind the scenes to make things work. You'll get a look at how features really operate, enabling you to understand how to use them to their full potential. Plus, you'll sharpen your ability to debug problems that you might not have been able to otherwise.

What you will learn from this book

• The basic concepts of using Analysis Services and the common operations you need to design your databases

• How to create multi-dimensional databases (such as multiple measure groups, business intelligence wizards, key performance indicators, and more)

• Methods for extending MDX via external functions

• Ways to administer your Analysis Services programmatically and design and optimize your cube for best performance

• How data mining along with Microsoft Office 2007 makes it easy to use and effective to perform analysis on data

Who this book is for
This book is for database and data warehouse developers and administrators interested in exploiting the power of business intelligence and leveraging the SQL Server 2008 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; National Center for Data Mining, University of Illinois at Chicago; 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 currently is a Senior Test Lead in the Analysis Services team. Siva's other interests include high - performance computing, distributed systems, and high-speed networking. Siva is married to Shreepriya and has twins, Praveen and Divya. His personal interests include travel, games, and sports (in particular carrom, chess, racquet ball, and board games). You can reach Siva at [e-mail].

Matt Carroll is currently a Senior Development Lead on the SQL Server Integration Services team at Microsoft. Prior to this, he spent 10 years working on the SQL Server Analysis Services team as a developer and then development lead. He's presented on Analysis Services at VSLive and compiled and edited the whitepaper "OLAP Design Best Practices for Analysis Services 2005."

Sethu Meenakshisundaram has more than 20 years of Enterprise System Software Development experience. Sethu spent a good portion of his career at Sybase Inc. in architecture, development, and management building world class OLTP and OLAP Database Systems. Sethu was instrumental in developing and leading highly complex clustered systems of Adaptive Server Enterprise. Early in the '90s, Sethu developed a version of Sybase Adaptive Server running on the Windows platform. Most recently he was an Architect in the SQL Server BI team driving technology and partner strategy. Prior to Microsoft, Sethu managed all of Server development as Senior Director at Sybase including building teams in the U.S., India, and China. He is currently a Vice President in charge of Technology Strategy at SAP Labs, USA.

Rob Zare is a program manager on the SQL Server development team. He's worked on the product since shortly before the first service pack of SQL Server 2000. During that time, he's focused primarily on Analysis Services, though for the next major release of SQL Server he'll be focused on Integration Services. He is the co-author of Fast Track to MDX and regularly speaks at major technical conferences around the world.

Denny Lee is a Senior Program Manager based out of Redmond, WA in the SQLCAT Best Practices Team. He has more than 12 years experience as a developer and consultant implementing software solutions to complex OLTP and data warehousing problems. His industry experience includes accounting, human resources, automotive, retail, web analytics, telecommunications, and healthcare. He had helped create the first OLAP Services reporting application in production at Microsoft and is a co-author of "SQL Server 2000 Data Warehousing with Analysis Services" and "Transforming Healthcare through Information [Ed. Joan Ash] (2008)". In addition to contributing to the SQLCAT Blog, SQL Server Best Practices, and SQLCAT.com, you can also review Denny's Space (http://denster.spaces.live.com). Denny specializes in developing solutions for Enterprise Data Warehousing, Analysis Services, and Data Mining; he also has focuses in the areas of Privacy and Healthcare.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1056 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 1 edition (March 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470247983
• ISBN-13: 978-0470247983
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 2.2 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #259,700 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #87 in Books > Computers & Technology > Microsoft > Development > SQL Server

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars End-to-End Microsoft BI book for professional consultants June 30, 2009

By Binh N. Cao

Format:Paperback

I am a microsoft professional consultant who makes a living working with Microsoft BI toolsets. I find this book of tremendous value because of the contents and because of who wrote it. The authors are part of the SSAS product group as well as http://www.sqlcat.com team (the #1 BI application team that takes on the world's largest and greatest database and Business Intelligent design challenges and delivers great designs and success stories)...this is the best of the best at Microsoft. I read the book end-to-end. I can tell you that the MDX, performance tuning, and scenario chapters alone, are worth the price of the book many times over. This book helped me succeed in my job and go further than other consultants. I would highly recommend this book to "professional" consultants. Beginners who want to learn the fundamentals to MSFT BI would benefit greatly from this best-practices microsoft team.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Not very comprehensive July 26, 2011

By Antonio

Format:Paperback

On a first glance, it appears to be a great book. However, it turns out that it's a complete waste of time and hardly touching on MDX. Too general and directed those who want a broad idea on how SSAS works. This is the first time I get disappointed with WROX. Don't spend more than £10 on it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Good book January 5, 2010

By Baya

Format:Paperback

Buyers - be aware, you need this book. Analysis Services is a huge product and it's impossible to cover all aspects of it. But this is a 1000 pages well worth your time and money.
If there was one thing that could be improved about this book it would be adding even more, complete examples. On a few occasions the book says "we'll let you (the reader) explore this functionality". With all examples the book could easily have been over 1500 pages long.