I had a post last month, MDX #25 – Slicer or Sub-Cube?, verifying that the query context did not change with the subquery.

This can pose problems if you want to use the Time-series functions in MDX. Two functions come into mind, YTD() and PeriodsToDate().

Both functions need to… Read more

Many function names in MDX are very family-friendly. Children, parent, ancestors, descendants, ascendants, are all terms we often use in telling family stories. Except ascendants. I never really understand what this word means until I ran into this word in MDX.

Ancestors VS. Ascendants

I checked the www.thefreedictionary.com, and… Read more

I’ve blogged about the Properties()  function before.

MDX #11 – How to get number of cars each customer owned using Properties() function?

MDX #12 – Do not forget the TYPED flag in the Properties() function 

The Properties()  function is used to explore the attribute relationships in a dimension.

If… Read more

Slicer, Axes and Calculations Can All Filter Data in MDX

Every developer with SQL background knows how the WHERE clause works. You put some condition in the WHERE clause, such as TheDate = Yesterday (pseudo code), and it will only return data for yesterday.

Not so straightforward in MDX. We… Read more

Functions such as NonEmpty(), Filter() and Exists() must use a numeric expression

Many of the MDX functions, such as NonEmpty(), Filter() and Exists(), seem to be easy enough to use, but they present quite a challenge for people with T-SQL background. The common theme among them is that they all… Read more

Calculated Field has existed in Reporting Services since version 2005. SSRS 2005 did not have the most attractive user interface design, so this pretty useful feature stayed hidden from me until version 2008.

Even in SSRS 2008, I did not pay much attention to it until I started to write… Read more

Almost every tool we learned has some sort of “Hello World!” tutorial lesson.

So here comes the “Hello World!” lesson in MDX.

Putting “Hello World!” directly on the X axis doesn’t work

You would think this query would work, by putting “Hello World!” directly on the X axis.

Unfortunately it… Read more

I often think that I am lucky to work in a profession that I enjoy very much. It makes everything I do a fun thing to do. Majority of the fun comes from the fact that I have my hands in almost every aspect of building a data warehouse. From… Read more

ParallelPeriod() function is very useful when we need to present data side-by-side for two parallel periods

ParallelPeriod() function is often used when we need to present data side-by-side for two parallel periods, such as in the example below where daily data needs to be presented side-by-side for each day in… Read more

Need to check the last time when our ETL processes ran successfully

Data warehouse developers routinely query the last data date (the last date when we have fact data) to check the last time when our ETL processes ran successfully.

It’s not hard to do it in TSQL. It just… Read more

A reader asked me to share a C Sharp script I used in this post, SSIS #114 – How many ways can you do INSERT-UPDATE?.

This code snippet tried to determine if the original value of MyFirstColumn is different or not compared to the incoming data in the pipeline.… Read more

Continuing from MDX #18 – Easy to concatenate row values into column in MDX.

I have not accomplished the goal of concatenating the set of top resellers in each country.

Count() function can count the number of tuples in a set

In this query, I am adding a count… Read more

Having worked with SSAS for a while and done some reporting with MDX queries, I started to explore opportunities to write SSAS “stored procedures”. I stumbled on a few blocks along the way to even set up the development environment properly before I got chance to identify scenarios to justify… Read more

Concatenating row values (within groups) into column in SSRS and TSQL

Concatenating row values into column is a never ending topic for report developers. It should be a simple task. That is, if the rows are not within groups. If the rows you are about to concatenate are customers in… Read more