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.

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