Book Image

Getting Started with SQL Server 2012 Cube Development

Book Image

Getting Started with SQL Server 2012 Cube Development

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.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Getting Started with SQL Server 2012 Cube Development
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Understanding data sources


In order to get started with the development of a cube, a connection has to be done to the underlying data source. SQL Server Data Tools contains a small wizard that will help users to create the correct type of connection.

To connect to the source, you need to specify the provider that should be used as well as the connection string needed to connect to the source. Analysis Services can be used against several different databases apart from SQL Server; in fact, it is one of the most common OLAP engines used with databases such as Oracle and DB2. To connect to a non-Microsoft database, you often need to install special drivers to be able to connect to the database.

Tip

Description of the supported databases and the necessary drivers is available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175608.aspx.

When connecting to a Microsoft SQL Server database, there are several options available out of the box. By default, the providers are installed on a Windows system....