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• Intelligencia Query

  Chris Webb, a fellow MVP and MDX guru, who's blog is a must-read for all SSAS junkies, was kind enough to let me take a look at the Intelligencia Query product he's been working on for a while with Andrew Wiles. Chris announced the product back... Posted May 14 2008, 10:37 PM by tlachev with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Reporting Services, Analysis Services, Business Intelligence

• SSAS HTTP Connectivity and SharePoint

  Scenario You won't enable SSAS HTTP connectivity via a SharePoint site. Issue You followed the instructions in the Configuring HTTP Access to SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 whitepaper but you get " Failed to... Posted May 12 2008, 07:58 AM by tlachev with | with no comments Filed under: Analysis Services

• Applied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 Goes E-Book

  I happy to announce my book "Applied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005" is now available as an Adobe PDF e-book. The first retailer that Google Alerts reported to sell it is Diesel Ebooks . It should soon pop up on all popular ebook retailer... Posted Mar 27 2008, 08:16 AM by tlachev with | with no comments Filed under: Writing, Analysis Services, Business Intelligence

• Last Non Empty Affairs

  Enterprise Edition of Analysis Services 2005 and 2008 supports semi-additive functions, such as LastNonEmpty, LastChild, and so on, to facilitate working with semi-additive measures, such as account balances and inventory snapshots. For example, the screenshot... Posted Feb 06 2008, 06:51 PM by tlachev with | with no comments Filed under: Analysis Services

• Analysis Services Many-to-Many Dimensions: Query Performance Optimization Techniques Whitepaper Available

  The Microsoft CAT team has released a new whitepaper Analysis Services Many-to-Many Dimensions: Query Performance Optimization Techniques. "Many-to-many dimension relationships in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services (SSAS) enable you to easily model... Posted Dec 21 2007, 07:54 PM by tlachev with | with no comments Filed under: Analysis Services

• Performance Improvements for MDX in AS 2008

  Here is a useful page from the SQL Server 2008 BOL that summarizes the SSAS performance improvements in Katmai pretty well. It also shows which functions are optimized. For example, the Lag function wasn't optimized in 2005 but now is. Posted Nov 25 2007, 11:01 PM by tlachev with | with no comments Filed under: Analysis Services, SQL Server 2008

• NEB Revenge in Katmai

  An advanced SSAS performance-related feature is Non Empty Behavior (NEB) which has been discussed in many places including this Mosha's blog . The issue with NEB in SSSAS 2005 is that you can very easily get it wrong. The server will trust you (this... Posted Oct 09 2007, 04:53 PM by tlachev with | with no comments Filed under: Analysis Services

• Protect UDM with Dimension Data Security Reloaded

  SQL Server Magazine published the second part of my Protect UDM with Dimension Data Security article in the October issue of the magazine. In this article, I explain how to use MDX expressions to implement dynamic dimension security. I discuss two practical... Posted Sep 21 2007, 04:39 PM by tlachev with | with no comments Filed under: Analysis Services, Articles

• Scale-Out Querying with Analysis Services Using SAN Snapshots

  If your organization can afford SAN, here is another best practices article by Carl Rabeler from the SSAS team. The Scale-Out Querying with Analysis Services Using SAN Snapshots article "describes the use of virtual copy SAN snapshots in a load-balanced... Posted Sep 12 2007, 04:11 PM by tlachev with | with no comments Filed under: Analysis Services

• MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-445): Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence—Implementation and Maintenance

  Those of you preparing for Microsoft exam 70-445 Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence – Implementation and Maintenance may be interested to know that Microsoft Press has just published a training kit with the same title which I co-authored... Posted Sep 12 2007, 08:04 AM by tlachev with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Analysis Services

• Identifying and Resolving MDX Query Performance Bottlenecks Whitepaper

  Performance is the most common incentive for using Analysis Services. Yet, despite the advances in the SSAS management tools, optimizing the MDX query performance is still considered as "black magic" by many. Graphical optimization tools similar... Posted Aug 28 2007, 10:21 PM by tlachev with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Analysis Services

• How to Get Extended Properties with SSAS OLE DB Provider

  Many report developers find the SSAS data provider too restrictive for authoring reports from UDM. Instead, they replace it with the native Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Analysis Services 9.0 which gives them maximum flexibility at the expense of convenience... Posted Aug 14 2007, 03:01 PM by tlachev with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Reporting Services, Analysis Services

• Scale-Out Querying with Analysis Services Article

  I've come across a good best practices article about scaling out SSAS by Denny Lee and Nicholas Dritsas. It describes how to set up a load-balanced scalable querying environment for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services so that you can handle... Posted Aug 01 2007, 04:51 PM by tlachev with | with no comments Filed under: Analysis Services

• Empty Affairs

  If you have a cube with large dimensions you may have come across the following error: The expression contains a function that cannot operate on a set with more than 4,294,967,296 tuples. The culprit is the NON EMPY (or NonEmpty), as mentioned in the... Posted Jul 12 2007, 09:24 PM by tlachev with | with no comments Filed under: Analysis Services

• Analysis Services Query Performance Top 10 Best Practices

  I came across this little gem which I haven't noticed so far. A nice summary of the 10 things you should do to optimize the UDM query performance. The best one is kept for last - scale out when you can no longer scale up. So true, if I could only... Posted Jun 25 2007, 04:36 PM by tlachev with | with no comments Filed under: Analysis Services