Creating custom aggregations in Analysis Services 2005

Most of you are probably using the aggregation wizard to create aggregations for your cubes. If you done your homework and set attribute relationships, counts and properties right (please refer to my previous post) – the aggregation wizard will generally do a good job creating the right aggregations.

Factors to consider when performance tuning cubes and MDX

Before we move on the the wonders of subselects I would like to give you a few pointers on tuning MDX queries and cubes in general. During my time as a performance tuner on Analysis Services – these are the most important factors you should consider in a 2005 environment:

Doing FIRST and LAST aggregates in SQL Server 2005

Users of Microsoft Access may be familiar with the aggregation functions FIRST and LAST. Basically, what you want from these aggregates is to scan the tables in a sorted order. The first or last value encountered in each group is send to the output – much like the existing SQL Server MIN/MAX function.