Peterson's Ponderings

Technical findings, ideas, thoughts and news directly from me.
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March 2008 - Posts

Data Warehousing Resources

I've had a few requests lately for resources I've used related to data warehouse design and performance tips for SSAS and SSRS for SQL Server 2005.  I thought if a few people are interest there must be a lot of others out searching the web for similar nuggets of gold.  So, here is my list of useful links for others to cash in on:

SSAS Performance tips:  http://www.calumo.com/pdf/SSAS2005PerformanceGuide.pdf  - this is a great white paper from Microsoft on fine tuning your cube performance from dimension design, through query and server hardware best practices.

Using Indexed Views to increase performance:  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/impprfiv.mspx  - this article describes what indexed views are and when you should consider using them in your database.

Designing your data warehouse schema - dimension modeling instruction and best practices:  http://www.kimballuniversity.com/ - This site was started by Ralph Kimball, called the father of data warehousing by some, and includes many free articles on dimension modeling for a data warehouse.  Understanding the Kimball technique is a must for those just starting out in data warehousing.

Best practices from a practical implementation:  http://www.microsoft.com/sql/solutions/bi/projectreal.mspx  - Project REAL was an attempt to implement a data warehouse for a real customer (Barnes & Noble) using SQL Server 2005 and a large set of real business data.  The result is a collection of the project code and documentation on suggested design approaches, best practices and scripts you can migrate into your own applications.