Category Archives: Analysis Services

Microsoft OLAP solutions come from SQL Server Analysis Services (for multidimensional data).

Multidimensional Space

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Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services Unleashed Book Review Chapter 2

If you come from a physics background, or if you read good science fiction, the title of this chapter might be deceiving. Even more deceiving is that you could cover this topic in only 10 pages. Some physicists speculate that there are only 10 or 11 spatial dimensions (including length, width, height and time). Mathematicians have classically proposed more than 11 dimensions, and on this basis, Analysis Services can allow more than 11 dimensions.

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Introduction to OLAP

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Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services Unleashed Review Chapter 1

This book can help you lay a strong foundation for SQL Server Data Mining. This book was authored by members of the Microsoft Product Support team, the group responsible for making the technology. Microsoft Data Mining is an important part of Analysis Services, and while this book does not describe Data Mining specifically, it does cover concepts impotant for enterprise systems. I recommend this book for any team implementing Microsoft Data Mining in a production environment.

Being the first post on this book, this blog entry will be modified later to serve also as a table of contents for the chapter-by-chapter review to follow. Since this book has 41 chapters, I have decided that this review needs to end in about 10 weeks, so there will be 4 blog posts per week only on this book. The run dates will be Thursday, Friday, Monday and Tuesday.

(Future Table of Contents:)

Microsoft Data Mining was created for production business intelligence needs. By “business” I and most professionals refer to organizations which are either non-profit or for-profit. The emphasis of data mining is on gaining insight for making decisions. By contrast, machine learning emphasizes best algorithms given a certain set of criteria. People who want to develop algorithms using Microsoft technology have a number of available .NET languages including C#, F# or IronPython. However, the numerical majority of users and uses are in environments where SQL Server provides a foundation for data analysis. Analysis Services is the technology developed to work with SQL Server Data Mining.

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