About the Series …
This is the twelfth 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.
The screen shots that appear in this article were taken from a Windows 2003
Server, and may appear somewhat different from coinciding views in other
operating systems.
Introduction
In our last tutorial, More
on Location, and the Importance of Arrangement, we returned to our
three-part mini-series, Optimizing MDX. We continued our focus from the
first article of the series, Control
Location of Processing, exploring the use of control of
location as a primary intervention type for MDX query optimization. We
performed a practice exercise to reinforce the concepts exposed, and then
extended our considerations of additional types of intervention to include the optimization
of set operations and syntax arrangement considerations. Within our
exploration of the optimization of set operations, we undertook practice
examples that illustrated some ways we can rearrange queries to enhance
performance, often significantly.
In this lesson, the
final article of the current Optimizing MDX mini-series, we will
expose methods of caching to load a commonly used slice of a cube into
memory, making for faster retrieval in prospective operations. Our discussion
will include various aspects of cache creation, and uses of caching within MDX.
In addition, we will touch upon other performance enhancement options,
including external functions and cube design modifications and
augmentation.
