Microsoft SQL Server 7 has its own ways of implementing data warehouses and complex data-analysis tools, and Data Warehousing with Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Technical Reference helps you get a handle on them. Although it"s primarily a reference to Multidimensional Extensions (MDX) and ActiveX Data Objects Multidimensional (ADO MD), this book includes tons of information about the Microsoft way of collecting and managing large quantities of data, looking at complex relationships among the bits of information, and deriving significant business-related meaning from them. Readers will find this book valuable if they"ve worked with OLAP before in environments other than SQL Server 7, and also if they"re totally new to data warehousing and plan to cut their teeth on Microsoft"s flagship database system. The book notes that the line between database software developer and database administrator is blurring further all the time, and it does a good job of explaining this new role. The text is careful to clarify procedures for building and managing cubes (and the reasons behind them), and provides lots of information on how to develop software that interacts with complex data structures. MDX (including MDX expressions) get a tutorial treatment, and Data Warehousing documents the ADO MD objects by fitting them into a Visual Basic application. This book will likely refresh and then build upon existing SQL Server knowledge. --David Wall Topics covered: Data warehousing under SQL Server 7 Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) and other data-analysis mechanisms The OLAP Management Console The Cube Editor Multidimensional Extensions (MDX) ActiveX Data Objects Multidimensional (ADO MD) Data Transformation Services (DTS) General engineering matters