SSAS Interview Questions / SSAS Training Curriculum

Whenever one wants to learn something or make sure one is competent enough to take the helm of any challenge in a particular technology, the first thing one needs to know is what one should be knowing. In simple words one should be aware of the topics that one needs to cover, then the next point is how much ground has already been covered and how much is yet to be covered. Below is a list of roughly drafted high level areas of SSAS in no particular order, which can be considered as a descent coverage, whether it's considered for SSAS training / SSAS interview. Keep in view that though the below coverage covers a major ground, it's not exhaustive and it can be used as a reference check to make sure you cover enough in your trainings / to make sure you have covered major fundamental areas.

• Types of Dimensions
• Types of Measures
• Types of relationships between dimensions and measuregroups: None (IgnoreUnrelatedDimensions), Fact, Regular, Reference, Many to Many, Data Mining
• Star Vs Snowflake schema and Dimensional modeling
• Data storage modes - MOLAP, ROLAP, HOLAP
• MDX Query syntax
• Functions used commonly in MDX like Filter, Descendants, BAsc and others
• Difference between EXISTS AND EXISTING, NON EMPTY keyword and function, NON_EMPTY_BEHAVIOR, ParallelPeriod, AUTOEXISTS
• Difference between static and dynamic set
• Difference between natural and unnatural hierarchy, attribute relationships
• Difference between rigid and flexible relationships
• Difference between attirubte hierarchy and user hierarchy
• Dimension, Hierarchy, Level, and Members
• Difference between database dimension and cube dimension
• Importance of CALCULATE keyword in MDX script, data pass and limiting cube space
• Effect of materialize
• Partition processing and Aggregation Usage Wizard
• Perspectives, Translations, Linked Object Wizard
• Handling late arriving dimensions / early arriving facts
• Proactive caching, Lazy aggregations
• Partition processing options
• Role playing Dimensions, Junk Dimensions, Conformed Dimensions, SCD and other types of dimensions
• Parent Child Hierarchy, NamingTemplate property, MemberWithLeafLevelData property
• Cube performance, MDX performance
• How to pass parameter in MDX
• SSAS 2005 vs SSAS 2008
• Dimension security vs Cell security
• SCOPE statement, THIS keyword, SUBCUBE
• CASE (CASE, WHEN, THEN, ELSE, END) statement, IF THEN END IF, IS keyword, HAVING clause
• CELL CALCULATION and CONDITION clause
• RECURSION and FREEZE statement
• Common types of errors encountered while processing a dimension / measure groups / cube
• Logging and monitoring MDX scripts and cube performance