Introduction to the Unified Dimensional Model (UDM)

I was talking to a colleague about Analysis Services and how awesome the Unified Dimensional Model (UDM) is. I then realized I have not blogged in ages about anything useful. So I have pulled together some of my thoughts about the UDM.

I was really introduced to the UDM on the Yukon Ascend program last year in Sydney. At the time I was still trying to find out what the UDM was in Analysis Services 2005 (AS2005). The simple answer is “The UDM is a Cube in AS2005”. Ok that may be glossing over the UDM a bit, but you will not find the UDM in AS 2005. There is no CREATE UDM function in AS2005. An AS2005 cube ties all the UDM features together.

The UDM, I mean cubes provide the ability for reports (OLAP, Reporting Services) to be generated against standard OLAP cubes as well as Relational data sources. Queries can be optimized to either run against aggregates from OLAP storage or directly against the relational data sources offering a high performance reporting environment. Reporting services has been extended too with a UI to create MDX queries (something that was sorely missing in SQL 2000).

The feature list for the UDM is huge. Data mining has been extended in AS2005 with seven algorithms. New KPI functionality has also been introduced in this release. The list goes on. I have put together some Useful links to UDM and Analysis Services 2005 resources.

Introduction to the UDM
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsql90/html/IntrotoUDM.asp

Analysis Services 2005 Processing Architecture
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsql90/html/sql2k5_asprocarch.asp

Enabling Drillthrough in Analysis Services 2005
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsql90/html/sql2k5_anservdrill.asp

Introduction to Data Mining
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/intro2dm.mspx

SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services (SSRS)
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/2005ssrs.mspx


I have started my research in earnest into how I am going to use the UDM on Business Intelligence projects. I hope this is a good start for any one looking at the UDM.

\Myles.