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 the anatomy of an MDX query


Now let us examine an MDX query statement, and look at the anatomy of the select statement.

--Query 5.4
SELECT [Order Date].[Hierarchy].[Calendar Year] ON COLUMNS,
  [Product].[Product Hierarchy].[Product Category] ON ROWS
  FROM [Adventure Works DW2012]
  WHERE [Measures].[Fact Internet Sales Count];

We will now go through the query bit-by-bit, and look at the different elements.

The FROM clause

The first section that we will start with is the FROM clause. In MDX, the FROM clause references the cube or the perspective; it can also reference a subquery. In the earlier query, you are referencing the Adventure Works DW2012 cube.

The WHERE clause

The WHERE clause filters the query statement to just return the values that you are interested in. Any dimension member or tuple can be specified in the WHERE statement. In the previous query, you are filtering the result by the measures dimension and you are specifying the [Measures].[Fact Internet Sales Count]...