Mastering Enterprise BI: Extend the Data Source with Named Calculations, Pt. I - Page 2

Introducing Named Calculations

Overview and Discussion

As many of us are already aware, the Business Intelligence Development Studio provides the environment and the tools that we need to design and develop business intelligence solutions based upon Analysis Services 2005.

We will create an Analysis Services Project within the Business Intelligence Development Studio, to provide the environment and the tools that we need to design and develop business intelligence solutions based upon Analysis Services 2005. As we have noted in the past, the pre-assembled Analysis Services Project that makes its home within the Studio assists us in organizing and managing the numerous objects that we will need to support our efforts to create and deploy our Analysis Services database.

We will leverage the Cube Wizard in this article to quickly design and create a cube, allowing us to focus on the subject matter of the article with minimal peripheral distraction. The Cube Wizard not only helps us simplify the design and creation of our cubes, as it did within Analysis Services 2000: the Analysis Services 2005 Cube Wizard is more powerful, leveraging IntelliCube technology to examine and classify many of the attributes of our data. Analysis Services can determine, for example, prospective fact tables, dimensions, hierarchies, levels and other structural members of our cubes from a given database schema at which it is pointed. Regardless of whether we make a habit of using the wizard in our cube development efforts, it certainly provides a way to rapidly generate a cube, if only to eliminate part of the repetitive work involved to create a "starting point" model, which we can then "prune and groom" to more precisely meet the business requirements of our employers and customers.

Considerations and Comments

For purposes of the practice exercises within this series, we will be working with samples that are provided with MSSQL Server 2005 Analysis Services. The samples with which we are concerned include, predominantly, the Adventure Works DW Analysis Services database (with member objects). The Adventure Works DW database and companion samples are not installed by default in MSSQL Server 2005. The samples can be installed during Setup, or at any time after MSSQL Server has been installed.

The topics "Running Setup to Install AdventureWorks Sample Databases and Samples" in SQL Server Setup Help or "Installing AdventureWorks Sample Databases and Samples" in the Books Online (both of which are included on the installation CD(s), and are available from www.Microsoft.com and other sources, as well), provide guidance on samples installation. Important information regarding the rights / privileges required to accomplish samples installation, as well as to access the samples once installed, is included in these references.