Road Trip with MDX Series Trip Plan:
While it may seem like this is a car commercial I am actually going to talk about SQL MDX which is short for Multidimensional Expressions which is a fancy way of saying it allows for query across multiple axes of an AS Cube. As you can see this subject could give you “jet lag” pretty quick in your journey. In an attempt to make it a little more fun I have introduced this as being a Road Trip which is my Series and along the way I will have a stop at several rest stops (focusing on the next leg of the journey) or parts to my multipart series. These “rest stops” will be specific to particular subject matter or POI (Points of Interest) in our Journey. So grab you GPS and let’s go for this wild ride!
As with any “Road Trip” preparation we need to make sure all of our equipment is ready for the Journey. First make sure you have SQL Server 2008 and Analysis Server 2008 installed, you will also need the AdventureWorks AS Samples installed along with the cube that can be downloaded from http://msftdbprodsamples.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=34032.