Cube developers often flippantly use the term XMLA in their discussion of maintaining, scripting, backing up, and restoring cubes and other SSAS objects; what exactly is XMLA and how can it be used? Check out this tip to learn more.  Read more...

In an SSAS cube you sometimes need to connect a dimension at a different granularity than other dimensions. For example,...  Read more...

I hope you were able to attend my free webinar on Introduction to Analysis Services on April 2, 2013.  If...  Read more...

Learn how to use Analysis Services Data Mining to identify the influence of RAID level and IO Pattern on Latency.  Read more...

Working with SSAS time related accounting functions can be tricky. SQL Server 2012 now offers Lag and Lead functions. Are these functions available in SSAS? What other related functions are available?  Read more...

Learn everything about MDX drawing only on your T-SQL knowledge in this series. Frank Banin continues talking about Calculated Members, Named Sets, and more in part III.  Read more...

Learn everything about MDX by drawing only on your SQL knowledge.   Read more...

When you have SSAS cubes with millions of rows of data, it is very helpful to create partitions. If you have a few cubes you could probably do this manually, but if there are many or if you want to automate this process you should look for smarter solutions such as programming the creation of partitions dynamically.   Read more...

Learn all you need to know about MDX, by drawing only on your current SQL knowledge.   Read more...

In this document I will attempt to talk you through writing your first very simple DAX queries. For the purpose of this document I will query the rather familiar Adventure Works Tabular Cube.   Read more...

This white paper provides practical guidance to help BI professionals and decision makers decide whether SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services tabular or multidimensional modeling provides the best fit for your next BI solution.  Read more...

This article shows a few simple techniques to summarize table data using T-SQL.  Read more...

Analysis Services databases should be backed up at regular intervals like any other database. Here are the basics. Using the GUI:...  Read more...

Sometimes it would be helpful to run scripts from a command line for Analysis Services. This would be useful for things like creating backups, processing data or running other tasks. Is there a command line tool like sqlcmd for multidimensional databases and Data Mining?  Read more...

If you are using the Tabular model in SSAS, it will use the xVelocity technology to load your entire database...  Read more...

A big headache in SSAS, especially when dealing with a large cube, is making a change that when deployed, causes...  Read more...

A customer provides an SQL Server Analysis Services trace file to analyze. You save this file into a trace table and execute T-SQL code to analyze the results. Rather than getting descriptive values for the EventClass and EventSubclass data, you get numerical values. How do you resolve these numerical values to meaningful descriptive names? Check out this tip to learn more.  Read more...

A guide to the SQL Server 2008 Business Intelligence exams.  Read more...

The introduction of the new analytic functions in the RTM version of SQL Server 2012, such as LAG, LEAD, FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE, with the improved over clause, greatly facilitate the analysis on ordered data sets, such as time-series data. Read on to learn more.  Read more...

There are several aspects that can take a toll on performance for your Analysis Services cubes. Some problems could be related to the source systems, some could be because of poor design of your cube and MDX queries and some could be related to network issues.  Read more...