Book Review - Analysis Services 2008 Unleashed

[Darren Gosbell]

Full Disclosure: I was lucky enough to be sent a free review copy by the publisher

But... if I had not been sent a review copy I would have gone out and bought a copy of this book anyway. Why is that? Because I had purchased the previous edition and I knew that it would be the most in depth book on SSAS 2008 available. It has been written by members of the product team and contains a wealth of information that just could not come from any other source.

I'm sure most of you have heard that Attribute Relationships vitally important in an Analysis Services database, but have you ever wondered why? Well this book explains exactly how attributes and hierarchies are stored and you can see for yourself the additional structures that are created as a result of attribute relationships.

If you are new to Analysis Services this may not be the best book to start with as it goes pretty deep.* It does start off with some introductory chapters on SSAS, but if you have never used the product before then it is probably better to start with one of the books that is explicitly aimed at getting started. But if you have done a project or two with SSAS and you are looking for some real inside knowledge, then this is the book for you.

In particular sections 5 and 6 that cover information that you will not find anywhere else. These sections deal with everything from the physical data and how data is brought in to SSAS to memory management, query processing and the thread architecture.

If you're lucky you may find it in your local book shop. if not, you can always get it from Amazon. :)






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