Fast Track to MDX (for SQL Server 2000) Second Edition Mark Whitehorn, Robert Zare and Mosha Pasumansky
OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) is the most powerful Business Intelligence tool currently available and Microsoft's Analysis Manager makes OLAP cubes incredibly easy to build and deploy. However the real power of OLAP lies in its ability to help you solve real-life business problems; to release that power you need to use the language that controls the cubes and allows them to be queried. That language is MDX (Multi Dimensional eXpressions).
Fast Track to MDX gives you all the necessary background to let you write useful, powerful MDX expressions and introduces the most frequently used MDX functions and constructs. No prior knowledge is assumed and examples are used throughout the book to rapidly develop your MDX skills to the point where you can solve real business problems.
Mark Whitehorn, co-author of the best-selling Inside Relational Databases, is renowned for his knowledge of database systems and the lucidity of his writing. Robert Zare is a Program Manager for Analysis Services at Microsoft: his inspiring talks on MDX sowed the seeds from which this book grew. Mosha Pasumansky was one of the authors of the OLEDB for OLAP specification that defined the MDX language and later he was the developer in charge of the first implementation of MDX in the Microsoft OLAP Services 7.0 product. He is currently the development lead of the Analysis Services engine team.
Second Edition – It was the clarity, precision and sheer readability of the first edition that made it a best-seller. With that firmly in mind the authors have left the original 18 chapters intact (apart from minor updates); meaning that the second edition remains the best introduction to MDX for SQL Server 2000 that is available. What they have done is to add three brand new chapters. These introduce the topic of recursion in MDX, walk the reader through the process of creating recursive expressions and finally demonstrate how recursion can be used to effectively solve a series of business problems.
Forward by Amir Netz, Product Unit Manager, SQL Server – Analysis Services at Microsoft.
A CD containing examples from within the book, and a time-limited version of ProClarity, is included.
Customer Reviews & Comments
Reviews for this book seem to differ, mostly people think its great, but a few think its terrible. I think some people are buying the wrong book, so here is my attempt to help them to save their money.
This is a really bad book if you are expecting a detailed explanation on how to speed up complex MDX statements. It is a dreadful book if you want to see every function in MDX listed, this book only covers about a third of them. This is a terrible book of you are already familiar with MDX and are looking for a book to take that knowledge further. Do not waste your money on this book if that is what you want; this is the wrong book for you.
On the other hand, this is an excellent book if you know nothing about MDX and you are trying to learn it from scratch. It is a superb book if you want the basics explained clearly, in plain English, with multiple examples. It is a great book if you are currently confused by the basics of MDX and need to get up to speed quickly.
I started out wanting to know about MDX from scratch and I found it one of the best technical books that I have every read. I didn't find any of it repetitive or slow because I was having to absorb a whole load of new concepts and ideas. Sometimes the authors do explain something in more than one way, but then I need that.
Take `Tuple' for example, the authors explain it carefully, building up this complex idea bit by bit. Before I read this the book, I just couldn't get my head around the idea, now it all makes sense. But I'm sure that section would have seemed boring and repetitive if I had know all about tuples before I bought the book.
Which bring me back to the original point. This is both a great book and an awful book, it just depends where you are on the learning curve for MDX. The authors wrote it for those at the bottom. As someone who started at the bottom, I'm really grateful that they did. Don't buy it if you already know the basics, you'll be disappointed. If you don't know the basics of MDX, this is a must-have book.
