Introduction to Attribute Relationships in MSSQL Server Analysis Services

In this article, we will examine another part of the conceptual model, Attribute Relationships. In this introduction, we will discuss several best practices and design, and other, considerations involved in their use. Our focus will be upon the general exploitation of attribute relationships in providing support for the selection and delivery of enterprise data. (In our next article, we will examine attribute relationships in a manner similar to previous articles within this subseries, concentrating in detail upon the properties that underlie them.)

Our examination will include:

• A review of the nature of an attribute relationship, its purpose within its containing dimension within Analysis Services, and its role in helping to meet the primary objectives of business intelligence.
• A general overview of attribute relationships, and a discussion of their default configurations, and how we can improve upon those configurations to enhance overall processing performance.
• A discussion of other best practices and general considerations surrounding attribute relationships.
• A look forward to the article that follows within our series, where we will perform a detailed examination of the properties underlying attribute relationships, along with a review of the respective settings associated with each property, based upon a representative dimension attribute within our sample UDM.

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