Fast Track to MDX (for SQL Server 2000) Second Edition Mark Whitehorn, Robert Zare and Mosha Pasumansky
OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) is the most powerful Business Intelligence tool currently available and Microsoft's Analysis Manager makes OLAP cubes incredibly easy to build and deploy. However the real power of OLAP lies in its ability to help you solve real-life business problems; to release that power you need to use the language that controls the cubes and allows them to be queried. That language is MDX (Multi Dimensional eXpressions).
Fast Track to MDX gives you all the necessary background to let you write useful, powerful MDX expressions and introduces the most frequently used MDX functions and constructs. No prior knowledge is assumed and examples are used throughout the book to rapidly develop your MDX skills to the point where you can solve real business problems.
Mark Whitehorn, co-author of the best-selling Inside Relational Databases, is renowned for his knowledge of database systems and the lucidity of his writing. Robert Zare is a Program Manager for Analysis Services at Microsoft: his inspiring talks on MDX sowed the seeds from which this book grew. Mosha Pasumansky was one of the authors of the OLEDB for OLAP specification that defined the MDX language and later he was the developer in charge of the first implementation of MDX in the Microsoft OLAP Services 7.0 product. He is currently the development lead of the Analysis Services engine team.
Second Edition – It was the clarity, precision and sheer readability of the first edition that made it a best-seller. With that firmly in mind the authors have left the original 18 chapters intact (apart from minor updates); meaning that the second edition remains the best introduction to MDX for SQL Server 2000 that is available. What they have done is to add three brand new chapters. These introduce the topic of recursion in MDX, walk the reader through the process of creating recursive expressions and finally demonstrate how recursion can be used to effectively solve a series of business problems.
Forward by Amir Netz, Product Unit Manager, SQL Server – Analysis Services at Microsoft.
A CD containing examples from within the book, and a time-limited version of ProClarity, is included.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - learn a bit about SSAS
This book appears at first read to be a winner. But one soon finds out that it is not all as easy as it appears. First and foremost, the included CD provides what appears to be a great selection of sample files, and great exercises that test your learning and knowledge of MDX; to use this software you need Microsoft SQL Server 2000. If you don't have this ancient piece of software accessible on a network, or loaded onto your own laptop, you will not be able to use the CD. Despite a new `Second ... Read More
Rating: - Good book
It's a good book. Just the data cubes are very old. I had to convert them to 2005 format.
Rating: - Great introductory book on MDX
Great introductory book on MDX.
MDX Solutions (the other one) is definitely more advanced.
I would like to see a newer edition of "Fast Track" with AS2005 in mind.
Of course by then, AS2008 would be RTM.
Rating: - Great Book...Would recommend to anybody interested in OLAP in MDX
Very good book...Helps a lot to understand OLAP and MDX concepts...Would like to see new edition with more advanced chapters
Rating: - Lot of fluff, Uneven, Unfocused
I was already quite familiar with SQL and I bought this book to understand what MDX was about. I was sorely disappointed.
If you are suspicious of books that are full of half a page screen shots of navigating menus and changing settings, your suspicions would be well-founded in this case. I daresay 40% of the book consists of screen shots most of which could easily have been replaced by single sentence descriptions (or half sentence ones.)
- learn a bit about SSAS
- Great Book...Would recommend to anybody interested in OLAP in MDX
