Many times when going from demo to development to client demo, we are always starting and stopping our SQL Server services on the laptop very often. This can be a pain when you have to constantly go through the configuration manager. I have taken some common code and put into…

Hey gang !

I’m presenting today at 1pm on Zero to Cube in 60 minutes. We’re going to build an analysis Services Cube to and I’m going to show you how we can make it useful for reporting in short amount of time. We currently have over 800 folks for…

Mr. Exceptional DBA is coming to our SQL Lunch. Patrick and I are excited to welcome Brad MCGehee to SQLLunch.com. "No Fluff Just Stuff " for a presentation on being an exceptional DBA. Brad is always a crowd pleaser so make sure you get on and check it out!  Read more

I’m presenting tomorrow on Zero to Cube in 60 minutes. This is an all Demo Session for work with cubes and putting data in a form that can be analyzed and reported on quickly and efficiently through SQL Server Analysis Services.  Come check it out at http://pragmaticworks.com/resources/webinars/February2010Webinar.aspx. Brian Knight… Read more

Hey Guys and Gals ! If you missed the webinars today, you missed a great show! Brian took us through the fundamentals of SSIS and getting started with this exciting product. SSIS is such a powerful tool, not just for ETL and data warehousing, but for environment management, workflow processing…

Recently I got a forum question that I thought would be a good blog entry for others to share.

The question was

“Adam, Is there a way to get the ultimate parent of a member when you have no idea what level it is at, how many levels separate it…

Hot Off The Presses !

This isn’t like when you stood in line at the kissing booth in high school. SQL Server 2008 R2 has a real date for release. It will be on the May price list and available May 2010. This is important since we have so many…

WOW – what a great turnout for our webinar series today. We had two sessions on Monday, looking for some great tips on getting started with management studio and introduction to T-SQL. We have over 750 people for each session, allowing us to help over 1500 folks get going in… Read more

After yesterdays’ webinar, we got a lot of great feedback and questions. Once of the more common questions was around intellisense, getting it to work and why some folks don’t have it, even though they are running SQL 2008.

The trick here is, you need to be running SQL 2008…

Once of the more common issues with working with data in a cube is that it does not always line up like we expect. This is usually a combination of our interpretation of how SSAS will handle our business and a lack of understanding of some feature, option, property or…

There are many ways to optimize your analysis services cubes, but the real trouble is how do you know where you’re making progress and where you’re not? Well, how would you do this in your T-SQL environment ? You’d check out a profiler trace while you were running the queries…

Recently, I was working with a client we were working on a calculated measure using the aggregate function to rollup a periodstodate calculation using a calculated measure. The value repeatedly returned null, but when I used SUM it worked fine. This appears to be directly related to an issue Microsoft…

When configuring measures in SSAS, you want to make sure you address a few important  properties. They are show in the screenshot, but let’s talk about them and what they do.

Aggregate Function

As shown in the screenshot you have a number of different options (pardon the pun). These are…

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When configuring measure groups in SSAS, you want to make sure you address a few important properties. They are show in the screenshot, but let’s talk about them and what they do.

IgnoreUnrelatedDimensions

Ignoring Unrelated Dimensions controls the way an unrelated measure is rolled up based on if there is…

There are a large number of Member functions in MDX that do everything from returning ancestry of a member to identifying the current member context dynamically. They can also provide some functionality around periods for opening and closing. Let’s review a few of the most important and commonly reviewed ones…

Ok so I know a statement like that will whip some of you into a frenzy, but it’s true. No Red Herring here. The Guardian, a UK publication is publishing all it’s data through Google spreadsheets. This is a great option for those looking for data from crime statistics, education…

I am excited to be speaking at SQLLunch.com on March 1st. SQL Lunch is a great website event where Host Patrick Leblanc brings speakers together for a 30 minute focused talk at lunchtime. It’s free, short and sweet and is starting to get some of the best speakers around. It…

There is a recently published whitepaper that talks about Microsoft AdCenter using SSAS 2008 to accelerate performance over 2005. Most of the paper is focused on upgrading and why you should do it. If you’re on 2005, the list is quite long but this will help you justify it if…

This whitepaper from Greg Lowe talks about the important strategy behind disk partition alignment. This is focused mainly in SQL Server, but this is equally important in the SSAS world. There are lots of times when we have a tendency to think about something only for DBA’s or for SQL…

Oftentimes you need to make a more advanced join that the default LookUp Transform will allow. The challenge is when you go to the advanced option in the left hand menu, the SQL Statement is grayed out as shown below.

This is because the SQL cannot be modified when the…