Having examined the use of the wizards that come packaged with Analysis Services in our first session, we will move forward to more advanced concepts in later articles; through the creation of samples of "real-world" OLAP cubes, each as a discrete project, we will gain a foundation from which to expand the rudiments learned up to that point to our individual reporting and analysis needs. Articles within this series will cover working with dimensions as a part of cube builds, with a special emphasis on time dimensions and parent-child dimensions. Once we've covered the basic components of Analysis Services and multi-dimensional cubes introduced in each session, we will take a look at examples we might find in our own reporting environments.

In this article, we will:

• Prepare Analysis Services, as well as our environment, for the cube model we intend to design;
• Create the basic cube model;
• Perform dimension design and other steps as part of the cube creation process;
• Save the model;
• Design storage for the cube we have planned;
• Process the cube; and
• Overview basic cube browse functionality.

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About the Series:

This article is a member of the series Introduction to MSSQL Server 2000 Analysis Services. The series is designed to provide hands-on application of the fundamentals of MS SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services, with each installment progressively adding features and techniques designed to meet specific real - world needs. For more information on the series, as well as the hardware / software requirements to prepare for the exercises we will undertake, please see my initial article, Creating Our First Cube.

Analysis Services, OLAP Cube, Dimensions, Measures, Parent-Child
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