Just finishing up my presentation for this Saturday’s Vancouver Techfest, and was putting a slide for some of the x-terms in SQL Server 2012. Just thought I’d share it:

xVelocity In Memory Analytics Engine

In SQL Server 2008 R2 – this was introduced as Vertipaq for PowerPivot for Excel (see James Beresford blog about Vertipaq)
In SQL Server 2012 this technology was integrated into Analysis Services.
In SQL Server 2012, it was also rebranded into xVelocity. The reasoning is that this is going to become part of a bigger xVelocity family for next generation performance improvements. Simran Jindal has a great diagram that illustrates this family. Thanks Simran, very helpful!

A one liner summary of xVelocity?

This is SQL Server going fast – sometimes really really fast (think 100X faster)!

MDX

– Multidimensional Expressions
– Calculation and Query Language for multidimensional cubes
– Check out additional examples from Chris Webb’s blog or the MSDN MDX Reference

DAX

– Data Analysis Expressions
– Calculation language for PowerPivot and SSAS Tabular (for now)
– Designed to “feel familiar” to those who know Excel formulas and functions
– Check out some common DAX expressions from BIDN.com, or the DAX Technet Wiki Article, or the MSDN DAX Online Function Reference