MDX Solutions: With Microsoft® SQL Server™ Analysis Services 2005 and Hyperion® Essbase, Second Edition

Chapter 7. Advanced MDX Application Topics

In the last four chapters, you have looked at basic calculations and selections in MDX, and expanded the vocabulary of functions and operators with which you can compose expressions. In this chapter, we are going to put together the pieces in many more ways, working through some more advanced concepts and techniques. Many of these come from assistance the author has given to other MDX users over the last seven years, so if some seem esoteric at first, remember that MDX has many different applications!

The same problem may be solved in multiple ways in MDX. The point of this chapter is both to give you a reference to solutions to many common and/or advanced requirements, and to increase your prowess in "thinking in MDX." So, alternatives will be presented when there are interesting differences in approach. Since there are important differences in the capabilities of the three product versions that this book refers to, we will also explore product-specific differences in ways of constructing the expressions that achieve the goal where relevant. As you read through this chapter, you will start to see recurring patterns in the way the various moving parts of MDX are assembled.

The expressions and queries in this chapter are oriented more toward the composition of whole analytical queries, and the principles that go into constructing them are useful for constructing all manner of sophisticated analyses, even if the particular examples presented ...