While reading the first chapter of the book "
MDX Solutions With MS SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 And Hyperion Essbase", I wrote down some important notes, especially for the MDX beginners. Even if you're experienced user, check this out. You may find something useful.
- If you were a code programmer in your past, you can relax: MDX don't care about capitalization.
- Don't even try to skip an axis: It's impossible and it is meaningless. Use the predefined names for the axis, such as: columns, rows, pages, etc.
- You're new to MDX and the whole OLAP gives you a headache? Try to imagine this as a hypercube. It can help you a lot.
- When writing large queries, pay attention to the "readability" of your MDX. Use the Monospace fonts whenever possible.
- Do NOT think of SQL when learning or working with MDX. Although
the syntaxes may look alike, these languages are totally different when you get to know them.
- .Members will give you all regular members. .AllMembers will also include calculated members.
- An expression like [Time].Members won't work if the Time dimension has multiple hierarchies.
- The asterisk (*) can replace the CrossJoin function. It may improve readability of the code.
- When using Order() function, you can specify a sorting criteria which is not shown in the result grid.