1. Building your First Cube with SSAS
Chris Albrektson

2. About Chris Business Intelligence Consultant & Trainer
Tech Editor of SQL BI books
Blogger:
Connect with me on LinkedIn

3. Todays Session
Introduction to SSAS Dimension Design Developing Cubes Administering Analysis Services

4. Why SSAS? Faster Reports Drag and Drop Reports Centralize Logic
Pre-aggregated data in SSAS much faster than relational queries
Drag and Drop Reports
Exposes data in easy to use drag and drop Excel reporting for users
Centralize Logic
Store common calculations in cube instead of user writing them on their own

5. Different Flavors of Analysis Services
Module 1
Learning Curve
Before we talk in more detail about Power Pivot, I want to introduce you to the different flavors of Analysis Services.
Microsoft’s Analysis Services product actually encompasses four different flavors of versions of the product. The first flavor of the product to be released was Analysis Services Multidimensional which is the industry leading OLAP or analytical processing engine which has been refined and enhanced since the mid 90’s.
Power Pivot which in Excel 2013 version is already a version 3 product was able to incorporate a lot of the code base from the multidimensional version, however it is built right into Excel and meant to serve a very different purpose, that of a self service BI tool.
So if we take a look at our line chart here we have scalability or how well the product scales to increasing amounts of concurrent users and volumes of data on the x-axis and learning curve or how easy the product is to learn on the y-axis. Of the four flavors of the product Power Pivot is the easiest to learn, however it is the least scalable as it can only take advantage of the computing resources available on the end user’s laptop or desktop. The next step up in scalability is Power Pivot for SharePoint which allows you to upload the Power Pivot workbook to SharePoint and then have a central place for other users in your organization to collaborate on your work. Another big benefit is you get to take advantage of the server’s compute resources.
The next level up is Analysis Services Tabular which is essentially a server version of Power Pivot that adds in more levers for IT resources to turn and tweak to improve performance and scalability such as partitioning, automated refresh, and advanced security features.
Power Pivot
Power Pivot For SharePoint
Analysis Service Tabular
Analysis Service Multidimensional
Scalability

6. Basic Terminology Cube Dimension Measure Group Attribute Measures
A group of attributes that represent an area of interest related to the measures in the cube
A set of related measures and dimensions that is used to analyze data
Measure Group
Attribute
Object that stores all the cube metrics. Usually a Fact table
Equivalent to a column in a Data Warehouse dimension
Measures
Member
Numeric field inside a Measure Group setup to aggregate
Equivalent to a distinct row or value in an attribute

7. Star Schema Dimension Dimension Fact Table Dimension Dimension

9. Contact Info
Business Intelligence Consultant & Trainer
Tech Editor of SQL BI books
Blogger:
Connect with me on LinkedIn