Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Reporting Services and Mobile Reports

Chapter 10Reporting with Analysis Services

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Using Analysis Services for reporting
• Working with Multidimensional Expressions (MDX)
• Building queries with the MDX Query Designer
• Building queries manually
• Adding nonadditional measures
• Understanding when to use the Aggregate function
• Using MDX and drill-through reports

SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) is an industry-leading semantic modeling, calculation, and analytic reporting platform. Today, SSAS comes in two different implementations on the same server platform. The multidimensional version employs optimized storage, data caching, and pre-aggregated calculations to achieve high performance and a rich set of analytical features that have matured over nearly 20 years. To achieve superior performance, SSAS tabular models utilize a modern, streamlined technology that uses in-memory column compression and calculations technology. To a query or data browsing tool, tabular models appear and behave just like multidimensional cubes.

NOTE

Arguably, there are multiple implementations of the tabular in-memory technology employed in SSAS, which also include Power Pivot and Power BI. These expanding choices underscore the versatility of the Microsoft BI platform and this impressive technology.

Today, both SSAS tabular and multidimensional models can be queried using either of the two languages developed specifically for each of these technologies, namely Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) for tabular, and ...