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

Chapter 13. MDX Scripting in Analysis Services 2005

MDX Scripting represents an evolution of the calculated cells functionality available in Analysis Services 2000. It would be wrong to say that it is a complete replacement for Calculated Cells though: Calculated Cells are still supported in Analysis Services 2005, and they are still necessary for some tasks (such as declaring calculations with session or query scope, or for goal-seeking calculations). Instead, think of MDX Scripting and Calculated Cells as two different interfaces on top of the same calculation engine, with MDX Scripting offering a more sophisticated and intuitive abstraction of the functionality available.

Nonetheless, mastering MDX Scripting represents a challenge even for those who are comfortable with multidimensional concepts. Whereas in Analysis Services 2000, Calculated Cells could be safely ignored by most developers because their performance was suspect, in Analysis Services 2005, the development team has made it clear that proper use of MDX Scripting is the key to getting the best possible performance for calculations. This, then, is a challenge that must be met by everyone who is designing cubes and writing MDX professionally.

The approach taken with this chapter is to introduce the core functionality with the use of a very simple cube, then to illustrate how this functionality behaves when new features are added to that cube. You can download the cubes we use from the web site accompanying this book so ...