IMG University - M2074 - Designing and Implementing OLAP
Solutions with Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000
Introduction
A fellow DBA I know emailed me one morning with a link to IMGUniversity with an
offer for a free OLAP course for the first 10 people or so to sign up. Since I have wanted to
learn OLAP, and free is good, I decided to sign up.
I guess I was quick enough, because I got a confirmation almost immediately that I had
been enrolled in the course. As with most free offers, I let it slide a week or so as I
had other priorities.
The Site
When I first logged into the system, I saw my class listed along with plenty of advertisments of
other classes. Since I was trying this one out, I ignored them and selected my class. I
was presented with a list of modules in outline form in a 3 paned browser. The left most pane contained
standard IMG navigation. The middle pane was the outline for the course with content appearing
in the right most pane. Personally I'd rather have the two navigation panes combined, but
it wasn't too bad. It is easy to navigate and find items as I needed them. A screen schot of the
main window is below:
The course first explained I needed to download some files and install Analysis Services (
you'd think I'd have done that), so I downloaded files and installed Analysis Services over
the next week and finally got going.
I wasn't expecting too much from a free course and I was pleasantly proved wrong. Over the past
couple years, I have skimmed a few OLAP/Analysis Services books and not really learned
all that much. It has seemed like a fairly complex topic to me. This course, however, really
helped me to "see the light" with Analysis Services.
The Course - Look and feel
One of the first things that I liked was an email reminder on Monday morning which showed me
where my progress was in the course (not started), the sample calendar for the next two weeks (I was
way behind) and the next 5 items I needed to complete. Usually I disklike this type of reminder, but
this one served to get me going.
E-learning is a difficult thing to do well. I have seen a few courses I like and more than a
few that I did not. This one wasn't outstanding, but it wasn't bad. As I started each module,
there were navigation buttons within the pages and I could easily move through topics or jump back
to check on something said previously. A sample screen shot is below:
Each screen is basically a power point slide and as you move from one to the next, the navigation
moves with you and highlights the current slide. Nothing fancy here, however, the site loads fast
and there are lots of graphics.
Where appropriate, there are lab exercises that use the files downloaded. When you download the
files, you create some databases on your server and actually build cubes and populate them with
data. These lab exercises were well written and covered all the steps needed to complete the
exercise. I was never left feeling confused or that a step was missing.
At the end of each section, there is a review page with a series of questions and answers. Nothing
special here. Once you finish this, there is a practice test that is timed and is around 10 questions
long for each module. The questions are good and you have to have learned something during the
module to answer most of them (if you are new to Analysis Services, as I was). Each question includes
a link that gives you some hints and contains the relevent material from the module. Kind of a cheat
link, but this is a practice test. Once you complete the test and grade it, you are scored and your
score is saved on the main page (see the first image above).
I liked this format, but was surprised that the Test was not marked as complete once it was graded. I
had to manually mark it. This may be something that others want to control, but personally, I'd like
to have it automatically marked once I complete a section. The same thing occurs when you complete an
essay test or a module. You have to manully mark them. Strange and, IMHO, not very user friendly.
Yes, there are essay tests. And you thought these were gone after college. At the end of
each section, there is an essay test that asks a series of questions 2-4 and you have to type an
essay type response. An instructor will then comment on your answers within a day. I can't speak
for whether or not all my tests were answered in a day (I'm not that good about checking back), but
the instructors did always seem to respond to my answers. Even if I was correct, I got a positive
response (see below):
Overall, I liked the structure of the course, though there are ways it could be improved. At
the beginning, I wasn't sure if I should have been performing any of the tasks in the module. I also
had expected items to be marked as complete, so I was appearing farther behind than I was.
The Course - Content
I learned a lot from this course. Before this, I had read some books (more like skimmed) on OLAP and
Analysis Services, but had not really done any hands on work. By the time I had completed this course,
I had a pretty good understanding of how to build a cube and the various options available to me
for dimensions, measures, etc. Maybe it was the limited time of the class, or maybe the online structure
appealed to me, but whatever the reason, I was pleasantly surprised to find I had learned quite a bit
about Analysis Services with this class.
The course was broken down logically and presented a topic in each section, then drilled down into detail
using basic slides. The slides were well written and I found almost no typos. At various places, there were
exercises that one could work through that demonstrated the concepts just covered.
At the end of each chapter, there were two tests. One was a multiple choice type test (like the
actual exam would be) in which you had to answer a series of questions. You could go back and forward,
but once the exam was scored, no changes were allowed. One nice thing is that there was a link to some
content relative to the question that would open a second browser for you. These were kind of cheating, but
if you were stuck and didn't want to browse back through the courseware, this was a nice option. When
you finished, the test would be scored.
Conclusions
I must say that I was pleasantly surprised at this course. Overall, my experience with eLearning has been limited to
test prep type services and basic testing on my companies products. I haven't taken an OLAP course from my company yet, but
I plan to and compare it to IMG. This wasn't very expensive (it lists for $149) and I felt that it was worth my time.
It also allowed me to move at my own pace. If you need some training, IMG University is worth a look.
As always I welcome feedback on this article using the "Your Opinion" button below. Please also
rate this article.
Steve Jones
dkRanch.net October 2001