This post compares Analysis Services and PowerPivot. Continue Reading…
OLAP
SSAS: Membership in Multiple Roles Could Throw Unexpected Surprises
Analysis Service supports role based model to secure cube data. Data can be secured at object level, cell level (Cell Data Access) and at member level (Dimension Data Access). There are relative merits of each approach, which isn’t the topic of this post but more details can be found here. A user can be a member of more than one role and it is important to understand the behaviour of Analysis Services role permissions in such a scenario. Analysis Services role permissions are additive in nature. This means if you are a member of a role that has been granted access to an Analysis Service object; you have access to that object even if you belong to another role which denies access to the same object. In other word the least restrictive roles permissions override the most restrictive role permissions. This could throw some nasty surprises that you never expected.
Continue ReadingKimball and Inmon DW Models
When it comes to Data Modelling you cannot go past the contributions of Ralph Kimball and Bill Inmon. There are numerous articles/white papers that go to great detail in dissecting their modelling techniques. There are serious fanatics on both camps. Rather than getting caught up in the debate, this post gives a snippet of both Kimball and Inmon’s model and let you choose which model is right for you next BI project. Continue Reading
Offline OLAP – Working with Disconnected Analysis Service Cube
Microsoft introduced a cool feature in Excel 2007 called Offline OLAP that enables you to work with an Analysis Services Cube in disconnected mode. The Offline OLAP feature basically snapshots a version of the cube into a local cube file which can be used by Pivot Tables. Continue Reading