Many-to-many dimension relationships in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services (SSAS) enable you to easily model complex source schemas and provide great analytical capabilities. This capability frequently comes with a substantial cost in query performance due to the runtime join required by Analysis Services to resolve many-to-many queries. This best ...

Default SSAS behavior can sometimes result in small queries being slowed down by concurrently running big queries. Recently in working with a customer, we observed the most common queries when run by themselves took about 1 second and some ad-hoc queries against their 110 GB cube took about 3 minutes.  When running both together, small query ...

Scale-Out Querying with Analysis Services Using SAN Snapshots

Identifying and Resolving MDX Query Performance Bottlenecks in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services There are a variety of things that you can do to improve the performance of an individual MDX query. To begin, you must identify the source(s) of the performance bottlenecks in the execution of a poorly performing MDX query. To identify the source(s) ...

Summary: SSAS uses partitions to contain cube data.  Small cubes might use only one, but for non trivial cubes, cube designers will create partitions based on ease of managing data and to split groups of data.  This document discusses how the server uses ''slices'' to examine partitions at query time.  The ...

Overview SQL Server’s 2005 Analysis Services has introduced several changes to the MDX queries syntax that can lead to better performance than the equivalent AS 2000 queries.   Here is a list of tips and tricks as well as best practices on how to get better performance from your MDX queries in AS2005. Details For filtering a set, use ...