Chapter 4. Advanced Dimensions and Cubes

My brother works as a draftsman for an architectural firm. He told me recently that much of the challenge of modern home architecture comes from building unique, creative houses using nothing but prefabricated parts. I compared that to when one semiretired carpenter single-handedly framed our entire house 20 years ago. The carpenter didn’t use any prefabricated trusses or walls. We would often see him pull out a piece of a shingle and a pencil to calculate cuts he needed to make to get a roof section to fit properly.

The Sales cubes in Chapters 2 and 3 are based on standard, simple star schema warehouse tables. They were like building a “typical” house by using “typical” prefabricated parts. The cubes you’ll build in this chapter are more complex and require more special handling. The cubes relate to realistic situations, however, so you’ll be glad to know that Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services provides the custom tools you need to create cubes like these.