Surprisingly I get a fair amount of hits for books related to Analysis Services. Being that I’ve bought nearly all of them, I thought I’d give a short opinion on each of them.
This was the first book released on Analysis Services 2005 and it’s pretty decent. It can’t be used as a reference book since it’s not deep enough; it’s more of a tutorial book.
If you’re looking to learn Analysis Services 2005, I’d start with this book. It has easy to follow exercises and isn’t overwhelming (for a beginner) like a few of the other books.
This is THE BOOK for SSAS2005. Excellent book, and the one I use the most. It was written by long time members (before MS bought the technology) of the SSAS team over at MS and it’s obvious that’s the case.
There are entire chapters devoted to AMO, Memory Managment, Query Execution, and the Physical Data Model. These chapters cover subjects you won’t find on MSDN or BOL. Gets really into the internals of Analysis Services.
Get this book. If I could only have one book on my shelf this would be this one. I’m currently reading it cover to cover.
I’d place this book between Applied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 (Lachev) and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services (Melomed, Gorbach, Berger, Bateman). Not too deep, not too easy. A good medium.
IMO Chapter 13 about Performance Optimization is the most worthwhile section of this book.
If you’re looking for a book about MDX don’t be mislead by the title. There are only a couple chapters discussing MDX and you’ll be better off buying a MDX specific book.
4. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services Step by Step – Reed Jacobson, Stacia Misner, Hitachi Consulting
Don’t have much to say on this one since I don’t own it. During one of my walks downtown to get a cookie at Barnes and Nobles (they have the best chocolate chip cookies BTW) I did get a chance to flip through it. Eh, it’s OK. If you’re just looking to learn the real basics it works. However, if you’re doing anything outside of the scope of building a simple cube I’d stay away. Start with the Teo Lachev book (Applied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005) instead. Probably a perfect book to use to study for the MS Certification tests.
