Chapter 4. Working with Data Sources and Data Source Views
You have completed the first three chapters of the book where you learned the concepts of data warehousing, worked hands on with SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) 2008 tools, and finally learned the basics of the MDX language and used it to retrieve data from Analysis Services. The next three chapters of the book guide you in the use of the product to design dimensions and cubes. The traditional approach of designing your dimensions and cubes is based upon an existing single-source data set. In the real world, you will be working with multiple relational data sources when you develop business intelligence applications. In this chapter you learn what Data Sources are and how they feed into the creation of Data Source Views (DSVs). These DSVs provide you a consolidated, single-source view on just the data of interest across one or more Data Sources you define. The Data Sources and DSVs form the foundation for subsequent construction of both dimensions and cubes. Note that more than one data source per project is supported as are multiple DSVs per project. You learn how this infrastructure plays out in this chapter.
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