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.
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