Chapter 9 -- Microsoft SQL Server OLAP Services

Chapter 9

About This Chapter

This chapter begins with a review of the steps required to build a data warehouse and the Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) database built on it. These topics have been covered more comprehensively in previous lessons of this self-study kit. The purpose of this review is to emphasize that the final steps of OLAP are dependent on the very first parts of the data warehousing process.

Once created, management of cubes consists of selecting the storage type, setting up security, and, in some cases, optimizing performance with partitions. The features of OLAP Services solve these management challenges by the architecture and usability enhancements such as wizards that simplify complex tasks.

Before You Begin

To complete the lessons in this chapter, you must

• Have installed SQL Server 7.0.
• Have installed OLAP Services for SQL Server 7.0.
• Be able to log in to SQL Server as an Administrator.



• Have installed the Exercise files from the Supplemental Course Materials CD-ROM to your hard disk drive. See the "Getting Started" section in "About This Book" for installation instructions.
• Have completed the exercises in Chapter 8, "Advanced DTS" to create and populate the Northwind_Mart data warehouse database. If you have not created the Northwind_Mart database, you can execute the C:\SQLDW\Exercise\ Ch08\MakeMart.bat batch file to create and populate the database. You cannot perform the exercises in this chapter if you have not created and populated the Northwind_Mart database.