Book Image

Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services

Book Image

Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services

Overview of this book

Microsoft's SQL Server Analysis Services 2008 is an OLAP server that allows users to analyze business data quickly and easily. However, designing cubes in Analysis Services can be a complex task: it's all too easy to make mistakes early on in development that lead to serious problems when the cube is in production. Learning the best practices for cube design before you start your project will help you avoid these problems and ensure that your project is a success. This book offers practical advice on how to go about designing and building fast, scalable, and maintainable cubes that will meet your users' requirements and help make your Business Intelligence project a success. This book gives readers insight into the best practices for designing and building Microsoft Analysis Services 2008 cubes. It also provides details about server architecture, performance tuning, security, and administration of an Analysis Services solution. In this book, you will learn how to design and implement Analysis Services cubes. Starting from designing a data mart for Analysis Services, through the creation of dimensions and measure groups, to putting the cube into production, we'll explore the whole of the development lifecycle. This book is an invaluable guide for anyone who is planning to use Microsoft Analysis Services 2008 in a Business Intelligence project.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Expert Cube Development with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

Measure expressions


We have now seen how to implement currency conversion using the Add Business Intelligence wizard in BI Developer Studio. The wizard implements currency conversion using techniques, such as MDX Script calculations, that are available in both the Standard and Enterprise editions of Analysis Services. However, there is an alternative way to implement currency conversion without the need for calculations in the MDX Script. We can use the MeasureExpression property of a measure instead, combined with a many-to-many dimension relationship in the cube.

The data model that we'll use to demonstrate this technique is very similar to the data model we used in the first scenario for the wizard. The only change is the definition of a many-to-many dimension relationship between the Currency dimension and the measure group containing the transaction data.

The Currency dimension will, here, work in the same way as the Reporting Currency dimension does in the solution generated by the wizard...