Professional Microsoft® SQL Server® Analysis Services 2008 with MDX

9.11. Summary

Okay Neo, crawl up out of the rabbit hole; you have reached the conclusion of this chapter. And what a profound trip that was! This chapter has hopefully provided you with amazing new tools for your BI repertoire. In fact, consider yourself admitted to the knowledgeable inner-circle of BI professionals because you know that you can add measure groups from any accessible cube to your own cube without the use of views in SQL Server. This one change encapsulates a lot of power, and you are going to have fun discovering that power. Similarly, with remote partitions there is that compelling scalability factor that kicks in; it's great! The Cube Wizard also provides you with the ability to create cubes without a data source through templates similar to the Dimension Wizard, which was not discussed in this chapter. The Cube Wizard has two templates to choose from. Once the cube has been created you would need to populate the tables with appropriate data before processing the cube. We leave it to you to explore this option from the Cube Wizard by selecting the build method "build a cube without a data source."

You've also learned about partition and aggregation design, including the enhancements made to the wizards, as well as the new UBO algorithm and dedicated aggregation designer. These new aggregation tools in Analysis Services 2008 will enable better initial aggregation designs, better usage-driven aggregations, and the ability to gain insight and even modify individual ...