Li S. - MDX with SSAS 2012 Cookbook

Sherry Li has worked with Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence stacks for many years. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona where she works for a major financial organization with responsibilities in implementing data warehousing and BI solutions. She specializes in ETL, dimensional modeling, cube design, and reporting in MDX and T-SQL. Sherry Li maintains her blog at bisherryli.com.

I owe tremendous thanks to Packt Publishing for giving me this opportunity to write this book. Readers who want to become proficient in MDX and have been asking for more.

I would like to thank Tomislav Piasevoli, for starting this book in SQL Server Analysis Servies 2008, and for his deep knowledge in MDX and cube design. I have learned so much from him.

In addition, I would like to thank Prakash Chatla and Jeremy Kashel, for their insight, helpful questioning ("I don't think the point you're trying to make comes across."), enthusiastic responses ("I think every BI consultant should read this book!").

I would also like to thank my friends, my past co-workers, for their earnest encouragement and my current co-workers for putting up with my late morning starts at the office.

Also I thank my father, for keeping me company late at night on Skype from the other side of the globe.

My daughter Shasha, for showing me funny videos on YouTube at night.

My husband, Jim, for loving me unconditionally.

My dog Atari, for always sitting by my feet, while I write late at night.

Tomislav Piasevoli (<>) is a Business Intelligence Specialist with years of experience in Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS). He lives in Croatia and works for SoftPro Tetral d.o.o., a company specializing in development of SSAS frontends and implementation of BI solutions.

His main interests are dimensional modeling, cube design, and MDX about which he blogs at http://tomislav.piasevoli.com. Tomislav also writes articles and speaks at regional conferences and user groups. For his contribution to the community, Microsoft awarded him with the Microsoft SQL Server MVP title.

I wish to thank everyone who contributed to this book, in one way or another. First and foremost, a big thank you goes to my wife Kristina and our three childrenone of them was born while I was beginning to write this bookfor having enormous patience throughout this period.

Secondly, I'd like to thank Chris Webb for vouching for me to the publisher and providing valuable information as one of the reviewers of this book. Greg Galloway, Marco Russo, Darren Gosbell, and Deepak Puri were the other precious reviewers of this book who corrected my mistakes and provided additional information relevant to the chapter topics.

Next, I'd like to thank all the people at Packt Publishing who worked on this book, to help make it better by assisting me during the book-writing process: Kerry George, Zainab Bagasrawala, Chris Rodrigues, and Merwine Machado.

There were also people who knowingly and unknowingly helped me with their ideas, articles, and helpful tips. My younger brother Hrvoje Piasevoli and Willfried Frber are representatives of the first group. The other group consists of bloggers and subject-matter experts whose articles I found useful for many recipes of this book. Here they are: Mosha Pasumansky, Teo Lachev, Jeffrey Wang, Jeremy Kashel, Vidas Matelis, Thomas Kejser (and other bloggers at SQLCAT site), Jeff Moden, Michael Coles, Itzik Ben-Gan, Irina Gorbach, Vincent Rainardi and in particular my reviewers again.

Additionally, I acknowledge countless contributors to MSDN SQL Server Analysis Services forumwhom I had the luck to meetfor the solutions they shared with the rest of us there.

Last but not least, a thank you goes to my current and former colleagues at SoftPro Tetral company who played a part by exchanging ideas with me during the time spent together all these years.

Prakash Chatla is a Business Intelligence Solution Architect and Software Developer who has over ten years of practical experience in building and implementing data warehousing and business intelligence solutions and products on the Microsoft platform in sectors, such as commercial distribution, financial services, online retailing, system integration services, software development, and the agricultural sector.

He used all his experience together with passion for programming in creating Microsoft BI client named PowerPanels available at http://www.powerpanels.eu. Currently, he and his team are building startup around PowerPanels.

My sincere thanks to Tomislav Piasevoli, Anugya Khurana and my PowerPanels team.

Jeremy Kashel is a principal consultant with Adatis, a UK-based Microsoft Gold Partner, specializing in the Microsoft Business Intelligence stack.

Jeremy has over 10 years' experience in delivering SQL Server data warehouse and business intelligence projects for a variety of UK and international clients. When time permits, he blogs at blogs.adatis.co.uk and has also spoken at a number of Microsoft events. Jeremy is the lead author of the book Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Master Data Services, PacktPublishing .