About the Series …
This is the tenth 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
With
this lesson, we begin a three-part mini-series, Optimizing MDX. In
these articles, we will explore methods for optimizing the performance we
obtain from our MDX queries. Throughout the three tutorials, we will discuss
the main types of intervention through which we can
enhance performance of MDX, and we will explore examples of the various types
in turn, in a hands-on manner, to provide a practical level of awareness that
we can apply in our daily work with MDX.
In this
lesson, we will:
-
Expose
general types of intervention we can use to optimize MDX queries; -
Discuss
how Analysis Services processes queries, as a preparation for our focus on
optimization techniques; -
Examine
the Large Level Threshold property, and its pervasive importance; -
Begin
an exploration of optimization through the control of location of query
execution (to be concluded in our next lesson).