About the Series ...
This is the fourteenth
article of the series, Introduction to MSSQL Server 2000 Analysis
Services. As I stated in the first article, Creating Our
First Cube, the primary focus of this series is an introduction to
the practical creation and manipulation of multidimensional OLAP cubes. The
series is designed to provide hands-on application of the fundamentals of MS
SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services ("Analysis Services"), with
each installment progressively adding features and techniques designed to meet
specific real - world needs. For more information on the series, as well as
the hardware / software requirements to prepare for the exercises we
will undertake, please see my initial article, Creating Our
First Cube.
Preparation
Prior
to beginning the lesson, you will need to download a copy of the sample Server
Access Log, ServAccessLog.txt,
a zipped text file that we used as a data source in Part I of this lesson. Once the log is
downloaded, follow the instructions in Part I
to prepare the file, then complete Part I
to prepare the data source that we will use to build our cube in this lesson.
Introduction
In our
last article, Build a Web Site Traffic Analysis
Cube: Part I, we returned to the hands-on
design and building of cubes for various business purposes, having focused on
some of the reporting options for Analysis Services for the last few lessons. In
Part I, after a brief discussion of
potential business reasons for collecting web site traffic data, we walked
through the design and building of a simple DTS package to extract, transform
and load statistical data for ultimate placement into a prospective traffic
analysis cube. Next, we set up a simple database to serve as the destination
point for the extract process, and as a basis for the design and creation of a web
traffic analysis cube.
In this
article, we will enter the design and build phases of our lesson, from which we
will emerge with a cube. After we have generated the cube, we will perform
browses of the data it contains to examine the results of our handiwork.
The topics within Part
II of this two-part article will include:
-
Creation of a database in
Analysis Services;
-
Connection of the new database
to the relational source table;
-
Creation of a measure for our Web
Site Traffic Analysis cube;
-
Creation of dimensions and
levels for our cube, including the manual creation of a simple Time dimension;
-
Incorporating drillthrough into
our cube design.
-
Performance of browse
activities against the new Web Site Traffic Analysis cube using the integrated
Cube Browser;
-
Performance of drillthrough on
a summary value within the Browser to its supporting detail in the relational
data source;
-
Verification of the results of our drillthrough exercise, using an independent
query against the source data in MSSQL Server.
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