MDX is great for business problem analysis. Moving averages, % of parent, YoY growth etc are business needs and surely MDX can handle it. There is only one hitch though. Most of the business users can not write it. There are so many tools including SS Management studio which allows me to write complex SQL queries many a times just using my mouse, but hardly anything to write MDX expressions as flexibly.
To make a start, at least a tool can be provided with the below functionality:
1. The interface would display the dimension hierarchies and and an area to create MDX expression. The area would have two panes, one which shows the MDX expression in AST hierarchy and other pane shows the real MDX script text.
2. The user can write MDX expression directly in the MDX script text pane and wheh toggles to AST pane, the expression would be shows as a expression tree.
3. The user can drag and drop the functions, operators or dimension members onto the AST pane and when switch it back to MDX script text pane, the MDX query text would be regenerated.
4. Of course, some wizards, templates can be pre-stored for common business expressions which gives the functional user some starting point to use it as is or further customize it.
In MDX studio by Mosha, I can paste a MDX query ant it generates a Syntax tree which i find extremely useful to analyse complext MDX statements. The problem is it is only one way, i.e. MDX query text to tree and not the other way around. Long back, I had seen an evaluation version of a tool named as Hungry Dog (if i remember correctly) which used to do it and I can not find them anymore.
E.g. in below screen, the left side provides a tree representation of a MDX expression and right a text representation. The tree one is easier to understand. Over time, the it could be made much more user friendly.
Unless we have something like above, we can not service those super intelligent functional users who understand business need in depth but can not analyze it themselves fully due to lack of a good tool to define MDX expressions.
If anybody knows a good tool which works on Analysis Services, kindly let me know.
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Great thoughts you got there, believe I may possibly try just some of it throughout my daily life.
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