Someone told me yesterday that "OLAP is dead". "Everyone is choosing tabular/in-memory." I know it's not dead, maybe at least sick. But did I underestimate the time of the tipping point, the curve in the hockey stick, where the vast majority of users will "sensibly choose" the tabular/in-memory option over OLAP? I realize some, including me, think this … Continue reading Is OLAP Terminally Ill?
Thoughts Around “Aggregate Fact Tables”
I’ve encountered many situations where some set of complications in a cube model were eased by using an aggregation table derived from some base fact table as the fact table. The complications leading to that choice usually include expensive on-the-fly calculations, distinct count measures, or even many to many relationships. The main idea is that … Continue reading Thoughts Around “Aggregate Fact Tables”
Find and Measure Relationships in Your OLAP Cubes
Huge strides in the value proposition of BI will come by jumping the chasm from simply reporting on data provided by the integrated view of our enterprise to discovering novel and perhaps counter-intuitive relationships hidden in that data. With the discovery of such relationships, we can burst outside of the box with novel strategies for growth and novel resolutions of problems. … Continue reading Find and Measure Relationships in Your OLAP Cubes
Bridging Predictive Analytics and Performance Management (Updating)
There are two pieces of the Microsoft BI universe that I'm predicting will trend upwards with great vigor over the next year. The two pieces are the breakout for Predictive Analytics and the next step for Performance Management. These two pieces of the BI universe are crucial towards the goal of exponentially increasing the value of BI - … Continue reading Bridging Predictive Analytics and Performance Management (Updating)
Analysis Services Data Mining Mental Blocks
Originally published on http://eugenea.spaces.live.com/blog on January 30, 2009. Since the very fun days when I worked in the Analysis Services product team (1998), I was fascinated by what was then a brand-new project named "Aurum". Aurum is latin for gold, and the root of gold's chemical symbol, Au. The result of project Aurum is known since 2000 as … Continue reading Analysis Services Data Mining Mental Blocks
Sample of my SSAS/MDX Workshop
Analysis Services is a difficult subject that at first glance can appear to be a relatively simple subject. After all, most people can learn within an hour or two how to create Pivot Tables in Excel and slice and dice through it like a pro. However, as one's requirements become more sophisticated, one eventually runs … Continue reading Sample of my SSAS/MDX Workshop
Soft Coded Logic 