Hi gurus,

I really want to start on the OLAP side of things and then, later down
the road, move towards DW and DM...

However based on the little reading that I have done so far I am
convinced that I first needs to get my fundamental understanding crystal
clear otherwise might end up developing solutions which will require
MAJOR re-do at some point...

Can someone please guide me to some initial reading material (URLS'
etc.) which will help me understand the concept of cubes the different
types of cubes (MOLAP, ROLAP, MOLAP, HOLAP etc, etc, etc,) and how to
design and deploy them....

As you can figure out from my post, I probably know one or two things
but need to do a lot of reading (and practice)...

Many thanks in advance.

I would recommend that you step back even further than that.

First, to really *get* what is different in the OLAP world, you need to
start with dimensional modelling.
Two resources:
1) Ralph Kimball's "The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Complete Guide to
Dimensional Modeling, 2nd Edition" (or similar, he has several)
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/tex...sbn=0471200247
2) Some of his technical articles at:
http://www.ralphkimball.com/html/articles.html
As a practioner, many of these are real gems that you will use over and over
again. These are particularly good for traditional relational database folks
who are coming up to speed as they address many common design choices with
OLAP systems.

Then, once you have dimension modelling firmly in your mind, I recommend
that you look at Eric Thomsen's "Microsoft OLAP Solutions" book:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/tex...sbn=0471332585
While it is a little bit dated now (it was based on SQL 7; not SQL 2000),
but it covers the fundimentals very well. And things like the storage modes,
and some of the underlying principals are exactly the same. The details have
changed with SQL 2000, but that is what this newsgroup and some
Microsoft-specific resources (such as
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/evaluation/bi -- which list many of the new
white papers on Analysis Services) is all about.

Hope that helps.

--
Dave Wickert [MSFT]
dwickert (AT) online (DOT) microsoft.com
Program Manager
BI Practices Team
SQL BI Product Unit (Analysis Services)
--
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

"Learner" <wantnospaml (AT) email (DOT) com> wrote