• It is assumed that delegates attending this course will already have had some exposure to Data Warehousing and OLAP.

• Programming experience would also be very beneficial, but is not essential.

At the end of this course you will be able to:

• appreciate the power and flexibility of MDX for solving real business problems by releasing knowledge from an OLAP cube
• understand the syntax of MDX and its most common constructs
• navigate the hierarchy of a cube
• use the most common MDX functions and know how to access further functions
• write MDX stand-alone queries for interrogating an OLAP cube
• write MDX expressions (versatile code segments) for a wide variety of purposes
• create new calculated measures within a cube

Introduction

• What is MDX; MDX's origins and likely future

OLAP terminology and cube architecture

• Dimensions, measures, members and cells; hierarchies and aggregations; levels; tuples and sets; member properties

MDX syntax

• Brackets, square brackets, curly brackets; dots and commas

MDX queries

• Using MDX for querying; SELECT, FROM, ON COLUMNS, ON ROWS, WHERE

MDX expressions

• The current cell; relative cell referencing; comparing values, comparing values between years, calculating values to date

Navigating the hierarchy

• Functions for navigating a hierarchy: Children, Parent, Descendants, Ancestor, Siblings, Cousin; nesting functions

Moving averages

• The type of problem solved with moving averages; a simple example; a more complex example that behaves intelligently within a hierarchy

Parent-child dimensions

• Overview of parent-child dimensions; why they are useful and how they are implemented

More advanced querying

• Named sets; CROSSJOIN; NOT EMPTY; TOPCOUNT; BOTTOMCOUNT; PAGES, SECTIONS and CHAPTERS