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I had a friend of mine ask me a question not long ago. He had developed a site for posting ads on selling houses for a certain company. The managers of the company were now trying to analyze the data on people posting ads. One of the things they were asking him to do, was give them a graph on how many people were posting ads on a certain span of prices. They weren't going to define him the span of money, but rather wanted him to give them the span, according to the amount of people that existed...
Slowly Changing Dimension Type 2 Tips & Tricks I've blogged in the past about Slowly Changing Dimension Type 2 , and I see that it's a subject that really interests you. I remember quite distinctly how hard and demanding it was to create it for my project (trust me I do!) and even to do it for two business entities. So, hoping that I may assist you even slightly, I thought I may share with you a few thoughts I have on the matter: Do you really need it? Now I know this is going to sound...
I know I had recommended the BIDS Helper for you before, but as a new version of this Visual Studio add – in just got out this Saturday with support for SQL Server 2008, I thought it's a great time to remind everybody they should check it out. Most of the features in this release are available only through their source code, which is there for you to compile and deploy yourself. My personal favorite feature would be the Non-Default Properties Report, which helps you track the settings in your...
Almost every post I made about Report Builder, be it the pros and cons of creating a report model on a cube or refining a report model based on a cube, brought the same question - what makes reports based on a report model to break and how can you avoid it? Well I didn't know the answer as I admit it never happened to me, (sigh of relief), but the question did bother me enough for me to try and research it a bit more on the internet. And yes, I'm happy to say there is more than enough information...
Creating a Report Model based on an Analysis Cube – Pros and Cons If you follow my blog, you probably know by now that I developed a report model based on the Analysis Services cube I already had. I even got around to updating the report model . And then, my users started using it. And you know, whatever we do just seems so wonderful to us, until our users find all sorts of flaws with what we did… so yes, my users did open my eyes to quite a few problems that may occur when you build...
Well I thought today we'd go over visual totals in MDX and also see how they may have an impact on how you assign role based security in you SSAS project. Visual Totals in MDX are there to give you just what they describe – a sum on the children in a certain set. Child members which are not in the specified set will be ignored during the calculation. For instance, if I have a set that consists of: USA, New York, Washington and California, when I look at the total for USA, I will only see it's...
Well I admit I never thought I'd be interested in PowerShell, but I guess it's time for me to learn something new. Darren Gosbell has developed a great new tool: PowerSASS, which is just as the title states, a PowerShell provider for Analysis Services. The tool actually gives you the ability to look at the information from the AMO library as if it was a drive. You can look just as easily at the Roles you defined in your cube or at the Server properties. As I am still learning it all, so for...
Well I guess congratulations are in order because I finally got around to using a report builder in my project. Turns out that building a report model based on a cube is as easy as 1-2-3. Still I had a problem, as for some unknown reason the translations were showing for my dimension names and my measures, but not for the dimension's attributes... At first I thought maybe this is a problem solved by Service Pack 2 (as my tests were done on a Server with Service Pack 1). Alas, no. So, a further...
Remember how I taught you to recreate your Analysis Project ? Well, let's say this time you have a model you deployed to the Reporting Services Server, but you have changed it since then and want the old version back. So how would you recreate the model you have on the server? First of all, create a new Data Source View in your Analysis Project. It doesn't have to include all the relevant tables, as you'll only use it as a shell to build upon. After you've finished defining the DSV...
A Parent - Child Dimension is a special sort of dimension, to be used in case: You have data even for non – leaf members. For instance, you may have set – up costs allocated for the Category level (the higher level), but profit data for your Product level (the lower level). You have an unbalanced hierarchy. The classic example for this might be the Geographical Hierarchy which at times might look like: Country > State > City, and at other times like Country > City. For an international company...
You can browse a cube through the cube browser in Analysis Services or through the one in the Management Studio. I usually use the one in the Management Studio, as it gives your more space to look. In the cube I created in Analysis Services, I added a Budget hierarchy in my Budget dimension. I decided to check the data for the new hierarchy in comparison to the money that was assigned to it in the Budget fact table. And it was problematic… I was opening the Budget hierarchy and in the first 3 levels...
I thought this time around, we'll discuss how solve order can affect your MDX calculations. I found that people tend to ignore this property, as it is not mentioned in the "Form View" of the Calculation Tab of the cube (which is what people usually tend to use when they write MDX for a cube. I hope this will be taken into consideration in SQL Server 2008). Now, this is a shame, as solve order can greatly affect your calculations. For each calculation you do in MDX, you can specify the optional property...
There are quite a few ways of ways of documenting the changes a business entity goes through over time. The most famous of them all (and the most difficult to build) is a Slowly Changing Dimension (SCD) type 2. doing this in a table, you would create a table which would include: an incremental key, the business key, the attributes you'd like to track for that entity, a start date and an end date (for which the information was right) and a flag which would equal 1 when we are looking at the last...
"Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!" And that was just my initial reaction when I discovered my post about the latest cumulative update for SQL Server 2005 SP2 got a mention on the opening page of Microsoft Israel! Yes! It's true!! I could hardly contain myself! J Still, I waited till I got home before doing my little dance of happiness in front of the mirror hearing in my ears "I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it…" (the Pointer Sisters for those of you who were not around in the 80...
Well, continuing our story about strange things that can happen, I thought I'd share with you this little tidbit. I was taking over a project from someone who had left the company a while back. In the cube that was on the old server, there was an MDX calculation. Only thing was that calculation was missing from the project on the new server (and I admit I couldn't guess what was behind it). So what can you do when you need something that in a project of an old cube? You import the project back to...
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