Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Event from SQLServerCentral
The 2010 SQLServerCentral Opening Night Party
By Press Release, 2010/10/26 (first published: 2010/05/13)
The 2010 PASS Summit is coming up soon and once again SQLServerCentral is hosting an opening night party that will be catered by West Coast Entertainment, bringing in a bunch of casino games. We'll have professional dealers hosting blackjack, poker, roulette, and craps on Monday night after the PASS reception. The party will be in the Convention Center, and here are the details
- Monday, November 8, 2010
- 8pm-10pm
- Room 615-617
We've hosted a casino party for the last 5 years and they've all been a lot of fun. We usually have 10 or so casino games set up for you to take part in. We give you a voucher for a bunch of chips, and so you get the chance to have some Vegas style fun without any risk. We don't even require you to be a good gambler to win a prize.
We give away the vast majority of our prizes on a random basis. We'll call out the next Deuce, Ace, or even one-eyed Jack dealt as the winner. So just by participating, you have a good chance to win something. We do save a few prizes for the hardcore gamblers, giving the top three money winners a chance at something interesting, but most of our 50+ prizes will be given out to random attendees.
We'll also be looking to give away a few pieces of SQLServerCentral swag to everyone that attends. In the past we've given a copy of The Best of SQLServerCentral as well as a polo shirt to everyone. I'm not sure what we'll do this year, but it will be something nice.
So be sure to register for the PASS Summit, and use our code, SSC2010.
You get chips to gamble with, we give away a ton of free prizes, and a couple of the hardcore gamblers usually win a bigger prize. I might change that this year since it seems I have the same 3 or 4 guys winning all the chips every year.
Our prizes last year included:
- Digital Picture Frame
- Iron Man DVD
- Nintendo DS
- Old Man's War in paper book format
- USB Flash drives
- A small digital video camera
- Red Thunder in paper book format
- Matrix DVDs
- and more
I've love suggestions for prizes, and I might see if I can swing an iPad. However I need lots of referrals. The more referrals, the more prizes :)
Tickets
There are two ways to get a ticket to our party. If you are attending the PASS Summit, you can use the "SSC2010" registration code when you sign up. This will get you $200 off the registration price and ensure you have a ticket to the party in your badge when you arrive.
If you are a speaker, volunteer, chapter leader, or someone else that already has a code to use, we are selling tickets for the party. For $30, you can attend and get a chance to win a prize. Our aim is to get a prize for every 3 people that sign up, so your chances of walking away with a DVD or something else are pretty good.
To get tickets, you can
- paypal $30 to sjones@sqlservercentral.com
- bring $30 cash to the door
Either way, be sure to get your ticket today.
Note that if you're already registered, we can't add the code for you. It's a referral code. However if you register now and forget, send me and PASS an email right away.
Details
Date: Monday, November 8, 2010
Time: 8pm - 10pm
Location: Washington State Convention Center, room 615-617. This is the top floor, above registration.
MDX with Analysis Services - Overview
Multi-Dimensional eXpressions (MDX) is a language used for querying and extending capabilities of Analysis Services cubes. MDX is typically used for two purposes:
If you examine a basic MDX statement it might seem that it contains parts similar to SQL statements: the SELECT, FROM and WHERE clauses. However, that is where the similarity ends. MDX is very different from SQL because it is written for traversing dimension hierarchies and defining cube cells. MDX doesn't support variables, parameters, cursors and other common SQL structures. On the other hand, MDX is more powerful than SQL when it comes to referencing hierarchy members. Even if you have programmed SQL queries for a decade getting used to MDX might take a while.
Fortunately there are 3rd party tools on the market that create MDX queries for you. Such tools can be used for browsing the cube data and could also help you learn MDX. Unfortunately, MDX queries generated by the 3rd party tools are typically generic and therefore not as optimal as they could be. Furthermore, the tool vendors often extend the MDX functionality by writing custom functions, so queries generated by such tools might not always work for your application.
When writing MDX queries you need to make a clear distinction between the data and metadata. Cube data is what you present to your users, for example you would show the sales amount for Ford Taurus 2005 and Toyota Camry 2004. Metadata is how the data is structured in your dimensions; for example, the product dimension could have levels of brand, make, model and year. It is important to realize if you are trying to refer to data or to metadata within MDX because different functions are used to address each need. For example, if you wanted to return all brands within your product dimension you would use the "members" function, as in [product].[brand].members. On the other hand, if you wanted to see all makes within a certain brand you would use the "children" function by providing the name of the parent, as in [product].[brand].[Toyota].children.
This section will introduce you to basic MDX concepts and then show you how to make your expressions more powerful by adding various functions.
- Creating reporting queries. Such constructs contain SELECT, FROM and WHERE clauses (among other elements) and are referred to as MDX queries or MDX statements.
- Defining cube structures such as calculated members, named sets, actions, key performance indicators and so forth. Such constructs are referred to as MDX expressions. MDX expressions do not contain SELECT, FROM or WHERE clauses; they are used to define calculations using cube dimension members and measures.
If you examine a basic MDX statement it might seem that it contains parts similar to SQL statements: the SELECT, FROM and WHERE clauses. However, that is where the similarity ends. MDX is very different from SQL because it is written for traversing dimension hierarchies and defining cube cells. MDX doesn't support variables, parameters, cursors and other common SQL structures. On the other hand, MDX is more powerful than SQL when it comes to referencing hierarchy members. Even if you have programmed SQL queries for a decade getting used to MDX might take a while.
Fortunately there are 3rd party tools on the market that create MDX queries for you. Such tools can be used for browsing the cube data and could also help you learn MDX. Unfortunately, MDX queries generated by the 3rd party tools are typically generic and therefore not as optimal as they could be. Furthermore, the tool vendors often extend the MDX functionality by writing custom functions, so queries generated by such tools might not always work for your application.
When writing MDX queries you need to make a clear distinction between the data and metadata. Cube data is what you present to your users, for example you would show the sales amount for Ford Taurus 2005 and Toyota Camry 2004. Metadata is how the data is structured in your dimensions; for example, the product dimension could have levels of brand, make, model and year. It is important to realize if you are trying to refer to data or to metadata within MDX because different functions are used to address each need. For example, if you wanted to return all brands within your product dimension you would use the "members" function, as in [product].[brand].members. On the other hand, if you wanted to see all makes within a certain brand you would use the "children" function by providing the name of the parent, as in [product].[brand].[Toyota].children.
This section will introduce you to basic MDX concepts and then show you how to make your expressions more powerful by adding various functions.
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