Retrieving Aggregate Data from Analysis Services for Reports

It's the second Tuesday of the month, so that means it's T-SQL Tuesday! This month's host is Jes Borland (blog | twitter) and the topic is Aggregate Functions.

I agree with Doug Lane (blog | twitter), who pointed out in his T-SQL Tuesday post that it's best if you use the database engine to calculate aggregates rather than use aggregate functions in Reporting Services. There are some things the database engine can simply do better, and we should use the best tool for the job. But an even better way to work with aggregated data, in my opinion, is to put data into a cube and let Analysis Services do the calculations.