About the Series …
This is the eighth tutorial article of the series, MDX in Analysis
Services. The series is designed to provide hands-on application
of the fundamentals of MDX from the perspective of MS SQL Server 2000
Analysis Services ("Analysis Services,");
our primary focus is the manipulation of multidimensional data sources, using
MDX expressions in a variety of scenarios designed to meet real-world business
intelligence needs.
For more
information on the series, as well as the hardware / software requirements to
prepare for the tutorials we will undertake, please see the first lesson of
this series: MDX Concepts
and Navigation.
Note: At the time of writing, Service
Pack 3 updates
are assumed for MSSQL Server 2000, MSSQL Server 2000 Analysis
Services, and the related Books Online and Samples.
Introduction
In our
last tutorial, Calculated
Members: Introduction, we saw through practice that we can easily create and display calculated
members within our queries to meet various business needs. We discussed the two
main ways of handling the creation of calculated members within MDX, focusing
on the use of the WITH operator to create a dynamic calculated member in
an MDX query. Then, we practiced the creation of a straightforward calculated
member, deriving a useful value from existing measures, and formatting the new
calculated measure to meet an illustrated objective.
Our
introduction to dynamic calculated members set the stage for the more advanced
functionality and processes of calculated members that we will begin to explore
in this and following lessons. We will reinforce our knowledge of calculated members, and then
broaden our understanding through an examination of multiple additional
perspectives of these highly useful components in our MDX toolset. In
addition, we will explore a means for controlling the order in which
calculated members are solved, discussing why precedence of
calculation might be critical to generating the results we expect.
