First, what does MDX stands for? MDX stands for Multidimensional Expressions. It’s a database programming language to query and create calculations and measures in Microsoft cubes. It’s a language used by databases dedicated to analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To go further, let’s consider the two types of Microsoft databases, multidimensional and transactional ones. In this article we are dealing with the first type of database: the multi dimensional ones, also called OLAP databases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To conclude, the MDX language is the equivalent of SQL but for cubes instead of databases. Business intelligence applications use it widely to allow end-users to analyze the financial or production data of a given company or organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
MDX queries are therefore indispensable tools for complex SSAS<\/a> projects. In order to get more information on the language check the Wikip\u00e9dia article on MDX<\/a>. For tabular models and newer analytics tools from Microsoft like Power BI for example, the equivalent language is DAX<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The main differences between DAX and MDX langages is that MDX can handle more complex business cases including parent-child and many to many relationships. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, a Tabular Model with In-Memory mode is limited to the memory limit of the machine. The DirectQuery tabular models can handle more data as they are connected to a relational database. Whereas the OLAP cubes are stored on standard disks with specific caching of sub cubes, and it can handle very large volumes, like terabytes of data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" First, what does MDX stands for? MDX stands for Multidimensional Expressions. It’s a database programming language to query and create calculations and measures in Microsoft cubes. It’s a language used by databases dedicated to analysis. To go further, let’s …<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6139,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[499],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6906","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-concepts"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/expert-only.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/expert-only.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/expert-only.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expert-only.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expert-only.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/expert-only.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expert-only.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/expert-only.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expert-only.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expert-only.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}OLAP cubes use MDX and Tabular Models use DAX<\/h4>\n\n\n\n