One of the most underused features in SSMS is the additional templates that are available for MDX, DMX, and XMLA. Many of you probably use the T-SQL templates to quickly build common statements, but struggle with the syntx for their counterparts in these variation languages.

Fear Not !

If you will do this with me:

1. Open SSMS and Go to VIEW > TEMPLATE EXPLORER
2. Select the Analysis Cube Option (This will load the SSAS related Templates)
3. Browse through the query options in this window
4. 
5. Now we have some options to use these in a couple of cool ways. First if you go to QUERY > SPECIFY VALUES FOR TEMPLATE PARAMETERS you can supply values for the templates, or you can hand code them in.

Your preference. 🙂 These can really save you some time when working with some common MDX queries like moving average and ratios.