Microsoft Olap Solutions

Rating:
Summary: Great in-depth Text!!
Review: This book is for the intermediate OLAP developer/DBA who wishes to know how to do more with OLAP and delve into it's capabilities in more detail. In relation to other books I've seen, this book goes into more detail on calculated members; the internal structure of OLAP; and has a great MDX reference with diagrams of function behaviors. I bought it to help me deal with my application solution and it is very useful since it has many examples and real-world descriptions. It also has 2 case studies that come in handy to the beginner and intermediate OLAP devotee. If you are looking for enhancing your OLAP analysis capabilites, this book is for you.

Rating:
Summary: Great in-depth Text!!
Review: This book is for the intermediate OLAP developer/DBA who wishes to know how to do more with OLAP and delve into it's capabilities in more detail. In relation to other books I've seen, this book goes into more detail on calculated members; the internal structure of OLAP; and has a great MDX reference with diagrams of function behaviors. I bought it to help me deal with my application solution and it is very useful since it has many examples and real-world descriptions. It also has 2 case studies that come in handy to the beginner and intermediate OLAP devotee. If you are looking for enhancing your OLAP analysis capabilites, this book is for you.

Rating:
Summary: A time waster
Review: This book is very poorly integrated. Wiley, the publisher, needs an editor who can understand what is assembled because this book should never have been allowed to be printed without massive editing. The authors, while too obviously expert at Microsoft Olap Solutions, are not able to clearly convey their knowledge to this reader.

Rating:
Summary: A time waster
Review: This book is very poorly integrated. Wiley, the publisher, needs an editor who can understand what is assembled because this book should never have been allowed to be printed without massive editing. The authors, while too obviously expert at Microsoft Olap Solutions, are not able to clearly convey their knowledge to this reader.

Rating:
Summary: Great book from the gurus
Review: This book is what you really want if you are serious about developing using Microsoft Analysis Services. Today with Microsoft Analysis Services ranking as the most widely implemented OLAP/analysis solution this is the best source to get started on Microsoft OLAP services from none other than Erik Thomsen the OLAP guru and George Spofford. The authors were kind enough to answer readers queries by email that makes a big difference to somebody getting into a new technology. The book points the strengths and limitations thereby preparing you to have workarounds for the limitations. I rate 5 stars for the completeness, presentation, honesty and responsiveness of the authors. They do not try to sell a product to you but provide the technology - a very small breed you find these days you will bang your head for days with a product for a limitation that was not known and later learn to live with it but here you know upfront what they are and how to avoid them through proper design and implementation. My only request to the authors when Microsoft SQL Server - Yukon the next major release of SQL Server which will be available in 3 months time will redefine and make SQL Server more stronger in database, OLAP, ETL & data mining segments I would appreciate if the authors post a electronic appendixes to the book to explain the new features in Analysis services and MDX in the new release of SQL Server.

Rating:
Summary: Essential (and I mean Essential) reading!
Review: Warehousing has been around for years, but many professionals will be interested in the new Microsoft OLAP cubes for ultimate performance. This book clearly and unambiguously describes what they are, how to design them and then (most importantly at this time) how to use them. For traditional data warehouse professionals, the idea of an OLAP cube may not be easy to grasp - I teach the Microsoft official courses on the subject and it never comes easy to the student. However, this book does a good job of explaining the concepts of Dimensions, Measures, Facts, Members, etc.. If, like another reviewer has said, you have to re-read the material, then I'm not surprised - this is more to do with the new concepts than with how the authors explain it. If, like another reviewer, you know what a star-schema/snowflake schema is, then you should find this book pretty straight-forward. There are some errors in the exercises, but the technical text is the best around (including anything that has come out of Microsoft!). A match for the MDX Sections cannot be found anywhere else at this point in time. I gave the book 4 out of 5 because of the errors in the examples. However, if you're really going to use OLAP Server then your own data will be much more appropriate for practising with anyway - don't let the few errors put you off. Buy it. Read it. Use it!