Introduction to MDX - Professional SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 with MDX - page 89

Chapter 3: Introduction to MDX
In Chapter 2 you ran a simple MDX query to retrieve data from Analysis Services
2005. Building on that, in this chapter you learn the fundamental concepts under-
lying MDX and how you can manipulate and query multidimensional objects within
Analysis Services using MDX. This chapter forms the basis for much of the subse-
quent chapters in this topic; in fact, in several places in this chapter and throughout
the topic it is shown how each interaction between client tools and the instance of
Analysis Services results in the generation of MDX. You not only see the MDX that
is generated, but also glean some insight as to what the MDX does.
SQL Server 2005 provides a sample Analysis Services project that con-
tains the majority of the features supported by Analysis Services 2005.
In this chapter you will use the sample Analysis Services project shipped
with the product to learn MDX. The illustrations are limited to three di-
mensions for you to more easily understand the concepts. You can ex-
tend these concepts if you want to view data across additional dimen-
sions. In this chapter you learn the basic concepts regarding cells, mem-
bers, tuples, and sets. In addition, you learn how to create MDX expres-
sions and MDX queries for data analysis from Analysis Services data-
bases.