Self-service Business Intelligence, Creating Value from Data | Getting Started with SQL Server 2012 Cube Development

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Getting Started with SQL Server 2012 Cube Development

4.2 (11)

Getting Started with SQL Server 2012 Cube Development

4.2 (11)

Overview of this book

Analysis Services have been the number one OLAP engine for years. With the increased focus on business intelligence solutions, there is a shortage of professionals in this area. Start your journey into becoming a BI developer using the popular tools included in every SQL Server installation. Getting Started with SQL Server 2012 Cube Development teaches you through clear step-by-step exercises to create business intelligence solutions using Analysis Services. The knowledge gained through these practical examples can immediately be applied to your real-world problems. Getting Started with SQL Server 2012 Cube Development begins with an introduction to business intelligence and Analysis Services, the world's most-used cube engine. Guiding you through easy-to-understand examples to become a cube developer. Learn how to create a cube including all the advanced features such as KPIs, calculated measures, and time intelligence. Security and performance tuning will also be explored. You will learn how to perform and automate core tasks like deployment and processing. The main focus is on multidimensional cubes, but the creation of in-memory models will also be covered. You will learn everything you need to get started with cube development using SQL Server 2012.

Getting Started with SQL Server 2012 Cube Development

Getting Started with SQL Server 2012 Cube Development

Credits

Credits

About the Author

About the Author

About the Reviewers

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Preface

Free Chapter

Self-service Business Intelligence, Creating Value from Data

Self-service Business Intelligence, Creating Value from Data

Identifying common user requirements for a BI system

Creating a flexible reporting solution

Getting user value through self-service reporting

Summary

Installing SSAS and Preparing for Cube Development

Installing SSAS and Preparing for Cube Development

Understanding the BI semantic model architecture

Choosing the deployment mode

Installing Analysis Services 2012 in multidimensional mode

Starting SQL Server Data Tools for the first time

Choosing the correct project

Navigating the project environment

Hands-on steps for configuring your cube project

Summary

Creating Your First Multidimensional Cube

Creating Your First Multidimensional Cube

An introduction to data warehousing

Understanding data sources

Understanding the data source view

Adding objects to the data source view

Understanding dimensions

Creating the first cube

Creating additional dimensions and adding them to the cube

Summary

Deploying and Processing Cubes

Deploying and Processing Cubes

Deploying objects to Analysis Services

Processing objects in Analysis Services

Partitioning cubes to speed up processing

Configuring storage modes in Analysis Services

Summary

Querying Your Cube

Querying Your Cube

Understanding multidimensionality

Writing MDX queries using Management Studio

Understanding the anatomy of an MDX query

Using Excel as the query tool against cubes

Connecting Excel to the FirstCube cube

Using Reporting Services together with your cube

Summary

Adding Functionality to Your Cube

Adding Functionality to Your Cube

Adding measures

Adding dimensions to the FirstCube project

Adding calculations to cubes

Adding perspectives to simplify cube browsing

Adding translations to support global implementations

Extending the cube with custom actions

Building budget solutions using writeback

Summary

Securing Your Cube Project

Securing Your Cube Project

Understanding role-based security

Securing objects in Analysis Services

Summary

Using Aggregations to Performance Optimize a Cube

Using Aggregations to Performance Optimize a Cube

Understanding cube aggregations

Adding aggregations to improve performance

Running the aggregation wizard

Adding aggregations manually

Using usage-based optimization to optimize the cube

Summary

In-memory, the Future

In-memory, the Future

Understanding tabular models

Installing a tabular mode instance

Creating a tabular mode project

Defining the workspace server

Connecting to the data source

Adding tables to the data model

Adding data from other data sources

Working with partitions in tabular models

Creating calculations

Specifying other types of tables and columns

KPIs

Adding hierarchies

Sorting data based on other columns

Hiding columns and tables from the end users

Creating perspectives

Adding security to your in-memory model

Optimizing the tabular model for performance

Querying tabular models

Summary

Cubes in the Larger Context

Cubes in the Larger Context

Using Microsoft frontend tools to query Analysis Services

Third-party tools

Summary

Index

Index

Chapter 1. Self-service Business Intelligence, Creating Value from Data

Over the years most businesses have spent considerable amount of time, money, and effort in building databases, reporting systems, and Business Intelligence (BI) systems. IT often thinks that they are providing the necessary information to the business users for them to make the right decisions.

However, when I meet the users they tell me a different story. Most often they say that they do not have the information they need to do their job. Or they have to spend a lot of time getting the relevant information. Many users state that they spend more time getting access to the data than understanding the information.

This divide between IT and business is very common, it causes a lot of frustration and can cost a lot of money, which is a real issue for companies that needs to be solved for them to be profitable in the future. Research shows that by 2015 companies that build a good information management system will be 20 percent more profitable compared to their peers.

Note

You can read the entire research publication from http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/B/8/7B8AC938-2928-4B65-B1B3-0B523DDFCDC7/Big%20Data%20Gartner%20information_management_in_the_21st%20Century.pdf.

So how can an organization avoid the pitfalls in BI systems and create an effective way of working with information? This chapter will cover the following topics concerning it:

Common user requirements related to BI
Understanding how these requirements can be solved by Analysis Services
An introduction to self-service reporting

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