SQL Server Analysis Services Tutorial
Welcome to the Analysis Services Tutorial. Data warehouse developers use Business Intelligence Development Studio to develop and deploy Analysis Services projects, and use SQL Server Management Studio to manage the Analysis Services databases instantiated from these projects. This tutorial describes how to use BI Development Studio to develop and deploy an Analysis Services project, using the fictitious company Adventure Works Cycles for all examples.
What You Will Learn
In this tutorial, you will learn the following:
How to define data sources, data source views, dimensions, attributes, attribute relationships, hierarchies, and cubes in an Analysis Services project within BI Development Studio.
How to view cube and dimension data by deploying the Analysis Services project to an instance of Analysis Services, and how to then process the deployed objects to populate them with data from the underlying data source.
How to modify the measures, dimensions, hierarchies, attributes, and measure groups in the Analysis Services project, and how to then deploy the incremental changes to the deployed cube on the development server.
How to define calculations, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), actions, perspectives, translations, and security roles within a cube.
Requirements
The following components, samples, and tools are required to complete this tutorial:
SQL Server Database Engine
Analysis Services
Business Intelligence Development Studio
AdventureWorksDW2008 sample database
For information about how to install these components, samples, and tools, see Installing SQL Server 2008 and Considerations for Installing SQL Server Samples and Sample Databases.
Additionally, the following prerequisites must be met to successfully complete this tutorial:
You must be a member of the Administrators local group on the Analysis Services computer or be a member of the Server role in the instance of Analysis Services.
You must have Read permissions in the SQL Server AdventureWorks DW database.
Contents
This tutorial is divided into ten lessons.
Lesson 1: Defining a Data Source View within an Analysis Services Project
In this lesson, you define a data source view within an Analysis Services project by using BI Development Studio.Lesson 2: Defining and Deploying a Cube
In this lesson, you define a cube and its dimensions by using the Cube Wizard, and then deploy the cube to the local instance of Analysis Services.Lesson 3: Modifying Measures, Attributes and Hierarchies
In this lesson, you improve the user-friendliness of the cube and incrementally deploy the related changes, processing the cube and its dimensions as needed.Lesson 4: Defining Advanced Attribute and Dimension Properties
In this lesson, you define a referenced dimension relationship, order attribute members by using composite keys, and define custom error handling.Lesson 5: Defining Relationships Between Dimensions and Measure Groups
In this lesson, you define a fact relationship for a degenerate dimension and define a many-to-many relationship.Lesson 6: Defining Calculations
In this lesson, you define calculated members, named sets, and scripts.Lesson 7: Defining Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
In this lesson, you define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).Lesson 8: Defining Actions
In this lesson, you define actions.Lesson 9: Defining Perspectives and Translations
In this lesson, you define views of a cube and translations of metadata.Lesson 10: Defining Administrative Roles
In this lesson, you define administrative and user roles.
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