As the readers of my blog know, bulk evaluation mode (called ''block computation mode'' in Katmai) delivers much better performance in MDX than the cell-by-cell evaluation mode. Therefore the most important optimization technique with MDX in Analysis Services is to rewrite MDX in such a way that makes block computations possible. Easy to say, ...

After writing my previous blog post about dynamic named sets, I received feedback from multiple people saying the same thing: ''How come nobody knew about this great new feature for the last 3 months''. Now, one of the constant complains about AS2005 was inadequate documentation. Almost two years after AS2005 release, the documentation ...

The September CTP of Katmai (speculated to be released during PASS) is expected to be the first Katmai CTP to contain significant improvements in the OLAP engine. The most important one (which is, in my opinion, is also the most important AS Katmai feature) is changes to the query optimizer, which are nicknamed ''Block computation mode'' ...