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

Update note on June 10, 2023: This blog is very old and much has changed since 2010. Performance Point is no longer a thing, Predictive Analytics is now Machine Learning. However, the main message about the importance of the Strategy Map still stands. The notion of a Strategy Map as the primary BI object of … Continue reading Bridging Predictive Analytics and Performance Management →

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 →