Book excerpt: Written by the lead developers of Analysis Services at Microsoft, this book begins with an overview showing how Analysis Services and MDX can be used to build data warehouses and multidimensional databases The authors then describe the development processes for building dimensions and cubes from various data sources Demonstrating a variety of techniques in real-world scenarios, the book shows how MDX can be used to query databases to provide sophisticated analysis of business problems Finally, the book explains how Analysis Services can be used with other components of SQL Server, including DTS, data mining, and Report Services, to provide comprehensive, end-to-end solutions