Book Description
MICROSOFT SQL SERVER 2000 ANALYSIS SERVICES STEP BY STEP is the fast, complete self-training course on the powerful data-analysis services in Microsoft SQL Server 2000. It's designed to quickly show you why multidimensional data cubes are such a powerful, popular analysis method, and teach you the pitfalls and design strategies behind using data-warehousing techniques. The book's easy-to-follow lessons begin with clear objectives and include real-world business examples. All in all, it's the fastest way to become fully conversant with Microsoft Analysis Services and the solutions you can build with them.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Our Review
Data cubes. Multidimensional expressions. OLAP. If ever anything sounded hard, it's data analysis. With SQL Server 2000, Microsoft continues its quest to change all that. SQL Server's new Analysis Services is almost easy -- but not quite. Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services Step by Step gets you over those final hurdles, with some of the clearest data analysis explanations and instructions we've seen yet.

Every chapter is organized as a lesson, with accompanying files on the CD-ROM. If you're a DBA, you'll learn how to create and manage your Analysis Services database. If you're a business analyst, you'll learn how to transform your spreadsheet models into a form you can scale -- and share -- throughout the enterprise. And if you're a business decision-maker, you'll discover exactly what you can expect from SQL Server 2000's Analysis Services.

You'll find step-by-step coverage of data cubes: imagining them, planning them, designing them, creating, them, processing them, and browsing them. You'll master SQL Server 2000's Dimension Editor, use it to work with star schema, time, and snowflake dimensions, and create real-world cubes for finance, forecasting, and Internet tracking.

Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services Step by Step includes a detailed chapter on integrating with Office 2000's analysis components (such as Excel PivotTable reports). There's a full section on Multidimensional Expressions, which transform your large OLAP database into a sophisticated calculation engine. Finally, since you want rapid performance but don't have infinite hardware budgets, the book walks you step by step through optimizing both storage and processing.

This book's authors are professional OLAP and data warehouse trainers. It shows, through the masterful use of analogies and examples. They've figured out exactly how to communicate this stuff. If you're just getting into SQL Server 2000 data analysis, this book's a must.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Olap Services Fundamentals is the fast, complete self-training course to online analytical processing (OLAP) from the premier provider of OLAP training. It￯﾿ﾽs designed to quickly show you why multidimensional data cubes are such a powerful, popular analysis method, and teach you the pitfalls and design strategies behind using OLAP techniques. The content of the book spans a full five days of instructor-led training.

Including:

2.5 days of in-depth introduction to OLAP 1.5 days of OLAP solutions and advanced concepts one day to investigate the Microsoft Excel for OLAP Client.

All in all, it￯﾿ﾽs the fastest way to become fully conversant with Microsoft OLAP Services and the solutions you can build with them.

SYNOPSIS

Olap Services Fundamentals is the fast, complete self-training course to online analytical processing (OLAP)-from the premier provider of OLAP training. It's designed to quickly show you why multidimensional data cubes are such a powerful, popular analysis method, and teach you the pitfalls and design strategies behind using OLAP techniques. The content of the book spans a full five days of instructor-led training, including 2.5 days of in-depth introduction to OLAP, 1.5 days of OLAP solutions and advanced concepts, and one day to investigate the Microsoft Excel for OLAP Client. All in all, it's the fastest way to become fully conversant with Microsoft OLAP Services and the solutions you can build with them.

Key Book Benefits:

Introduces OLAP with progressive lessons to help you begin creating solutions quickly The only self-paced training book about Microsoft OLAP Services for the non-programmer and Excel super user

About the Technology:

Online analytical processing (OLAP) is an increasingly popular technology that can dramatically improve business analysis. Despite the buzz about OLAP in recent years, however, it has remained in a rarified niche. Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 is changing all that: It includes as a component Microsoft SQL Server OLAP Services. The full-featured OLAP capability of this component allows users to perform sophisticated analyses on large volumes of data with exceptional performance.