Who this book is for

This book is aimed at Business Intelligence consultants and developers who work with Analysis Services Multidimensional Models on a daily basis, who already know the basics of building a cube, and who want to gain a deeper practical knowledge of the product and perhaps check that they aren't doing anything badly wrong at the moment.

It's not a book for absolute beginners and we're going to assume that you understand basic Analysis Services concepts such as what a cube and a dimension is, and that you're not interested in reading yet another walkthrough of the various wizards in SQL Server Data Tools. Equally, it's not an advanced book and we're not going to try to dazzle you with our knowledge of obscure properties or complex data modeling scenarios that you're never likely to encounter. We're not going to cover all of the functionality available in Analysis Services either, and in the case of MDX where a full treatment of the subject requires a book on its own, we're going to give some examples of code that you can copy and adapt yourselves, but not try to explain how the language works.