Aggregation Design and Usage-Based Optimization - Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services - page 427

Manual Design and Management of Aggregations

New in Analysis Services 2008 is ability to manually design and manage aggregations.
Based on the customer feedback and the popularity of Aggregation Manager sample appli-
cation, several improvements have been made to the BI Dev Studio to enable you to visu-
ally review and create new aggregations directly without running the Aggregation Design
Algorithm Wizard or the Usage-Based Optimization Wizard. You can now also discover
aggregation design objects and assign aggregation designs to a subset of partitions in the
measure group.

For manual design of aggregations, BI Dev Studio introduces the Aggregations tab in the
cube editor dialog. For example, open the sample FoodMart 2008 project in BI Dev Studio.
Double-click the Warehouse and Sales cube to open the cube editor. Click the
Aggregations tab and you will see list of the measure groups and aggregation design
objects that belong to the measure groups, similar to what is shown in Figure 23.10.

FIGURE 23.10

The Aggregations tab of the Warehouse and Sales cube.

If no aggregation designs exist in the measure group, you will see “Unassigned
Aggregation Design” under the measure group node.

The right-click menu on the measure group presents you with several options:

. Design Aggregations —To run the aggregation design algorithm.

. Usage-Based Optimization —To run the usage-based optimization algorithm.