Book Image

Hands-On SQL Server 2019 Analysis Services

By : Steve Hughes
Book Image

Hands-On SQL Server 2019 Analysis Services

By: Steve Hughes

Overview of this book

SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) continues to be a leading enterprise-scale toolset, enabling customers to deliver data and analytics across large datasets with great performance. This book will help you understand MS SQL Server 2019’s new features and improvements, especially when it comes to SSAS. First, you’ll cover a quick overview of SQL Server 2019, learn how to choose the right analytical model to use, and understand their key differences. You’ll then explore how to create a multi-dimensional model with SSAS and expand on that model with MDX. Next, you’ll create and deploy a tabular model using Microsoft Visual Studio and Management Studio. You'll learn when and how to use both tabular and multi-dimensional model types, how to deploy and configure your servers to support them, and design principles that are relevant to each model. The book comes packed with tips and tricks to build measures, optimize your design, and interact with models using Excel and Power BI. All this will help you visualize data to gain useful insights and make better decisions. Finally, you’ll discover practices and tools for securing and maintaining your models once they are deployed. By the end of this MS SQL Server book, you’ll be able to choose the right model and build and deploy it to support the analytical needs of your business.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Section 1: Choosing Your Model
4
Section 2: Building and Deploying a Multidimensional Model
8
Section 3: Building and Deploying Tabular Models
12
Section 4: Exposing Insights while Visualizing Data from Your Models
15
Section 5: Security, Administration, and Managing Your Models

Chapter 1: Analysis Services in SQL Server 2019

As you prepare to build your analytic models in SQL Server, you need to understand the basics about SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) including the purpose of the overall platform, with a basic understanding of the product. We will be exploring the origin of SSAS and its evolution into what we use today.

Upon completion of this chapter, you should understand where SSAS fits into the overall data analytics ecosystem. In this chapter, we're going to answer the following key questions about Analysis Services: 

  • What is SQL Server Analysis Services anyway?
  • Why use SQL Server Analysis Services?
  • What's new in SQL Server Analysis Services 2019?
  • What are the tools used with SQL Server Analysis Services?
  • One last thing – our sample data

In preparation for the rest of the book, the final section of the chapter discusses the tools we use. We will provide links and instructions for the installation procedures to prepare for the various examples and development used throughout the book. We will also walk through the restoration of the SQL Server database used to support our Analysis Services examples in later chapters.