SSAS Interview Questions and Answers

OLAP stands for Online Analytical Processing. In every Business application, this technology is used. It helps in performing multidimensional analysis of business data and provides solutions for complex calculations and data modeling.

With the help of ALTER Command, we can add columns to an existing table. This command allows you to drop a column also. The query that can be used to add a column into the existing one is-

ALTER TABLE dbo.StudentRcords ADD hobbies VARCHAR(50) NULL;

NOTE- You have to make the hobbies column NOT NULL or have to give a default value to it, otherwise the above query won’t work.

The is aggregatable property of an attribute helps in assigning members to each dimension. If you will set its value to FALSE then it will not show to all members.

SQL Server Analysis Services data source exists as a connection from which we can import or load required data from the database or data warehouse. It contains information like provider, server name, and database name.

Different data sources supported by it are-

• Oracle
• MS Access
• Teradata
• IBM DB2 and other relational databases

The purpose of setting the logical keys is achieved in the scenario where you have to work on the data from a variety of data sources, that time you have to define the logical relationships manually in DSV to supply those relationships that have been defined automatically.

Unified Dimensional Model acts as a bridge between user and data sources. It is built over physical data sources so that the end-user submits queries against the UDM with the help of tools like Microsoft Excel.

Significances are like

• Improve the user model.
• Gives high-performance queries that support interactive analysis.

We can tune performance in SSAS by the following methods-

• Use Partitions
• Query engine cache should be efficiently used.
• Write efficient multidimensional expressions.
• To reduce the number of records defines effective aggregations.

OLAP Database is also known as Fast Analysis of Shared Multidimensional Information i.e. FASMI. It is because it fulfills the FASMI rules that are described below and hidden in its name only-

• Fast Analysis
• Data should be shared by many users
• Data inside the database must be Multidimensional
• Information (support a large volume of data)

XMLA refers to XML for Analysis and is used for accessing data in analytical systems like OLAP. This standard uses Execute and Discover methods, one allows applications to execute and later allows to fetch the information.

In SSAS KPIs are Key Performance Indicators and are used to estimate if the goals are achieved. A value, goal, and trend can be measured by it.