SSAS Actions are not showing in pivot tables in Additional Actions - ssas

We're seeing some very strange behavior with our SSAS Actions. We have a cube with two Actions (named "A Detail" and "B Detail") where they both have conditions on Measure M. Both are Target Type Cells, Rowset Types.
When we use a pivot table in Excel and go to Additional Actions, we only see one of them, usually the first one in alphabetical order (A Detail). Strangely, if we rename the Action name of "A Detail" to "zA Detail", then we see "B Detail" but not "zA Detail", presumably because of the alphabetical ordering.
We are using ASSP - Analysis Services Stored Procedure Project for some of our Action logic..(SELECT ("+ ASSP.CurrentCellAttributes() + ") ON 0 FROM [Opportunities]) although I don't think this is affecting anything.
I'm not sure how best to troubleshoot this or break this down further. I had no idea one Action could affect the visibility of other Actions.
Microsoft SQL Server 2012 (SP3) / Excel 2016

Related

SQL Server - Full Text Catalog - Functionality / maintenance questions

I have a SQL query which is using CONTAINS and is not finding recently created records that it should be finding, for example...
SELECT Id, Title
FROM Books
WHERE CONTAINS(Title, 'Frankenstein')
...should find...
Id_____Title
321____Frankenstein
Older records are being found.
I believe this may be related to a full text catalog, (present in SSMS under DB > Storage > Full Text Catalogs), which has the table as an object, and has the Title column ticked as an eligible column. "Track changes" is set to automatic. The "Last Population Date" is over a year ago. The "Population Status" is "Idle".
My understanding so far, (which may well be wrong), is that the CONTAINS searchable terms are being controlled by the full text catalog, therefore perhaps if I rebuild, or repopulate it, the record will be found? Could I even schedule this to happen automatically to prevent this problem in the future?
The "Repopulate catalog" option on the full text catalog is greyed out. The "Rebuild catalog" option is not greyed out. I am concerned about attempting to perform either operation without fully understanding what they do... could you explain? I have already read the material around this subject on MSDN.
Thanks.

Managing PerformancePoint Filters With Slowly Changing Dimensions

Just a bit of background info:
I have dimension table which uses SCD2 to track user changes in our company (team changes, job title changes etc) See example below:
I've built an Analysis Services Cube and created all the necessary hierarchy's for the dimensions and it works well when navigating and drilling down through the fact table.
The problem I have is with the filters on the PerformancePoint dashboard. As I'm using the User Dimension table with it's multiple instances of users it's showing duplicates up in the list. I can understand why as the surrogate ID is being referenced on the Dimension. But if I choose the first instance of the A-team I will see all their sales for a particular period and if I choose the second instance I will see all their sales for a different period.
What is the best way to handle this type of behavior? Ideally I'd like to see a distinct list of teams in alphabetical order and when I choose the team name it shows all of their data over time.
I've considered using MDX query filters but I'd like to see if there's anything I haven't thought about.
I realise this isn't an easy and quick question but any help would be appreciated!
The answer was simple after having a trawl through my User Dimension table on the Cube.
Under my user dimension I added 2 duplicate attributes to my attributes list ("Team Filter" is a copy of "Team", "User Filter" a copy of "User Name") these will be used only for filtering the dashboard.
Under the attribute properties for each duplicate I then set AttributeHierarchyOptimizedState to "Not Optimized", I also set their AttributeHierarchyVisible to false as I'd shown the two duplicate attributes in the hierarchy window in the middle.
Deploy your Cube to the server and go in to PerformancePoint. Create a new MDX Filter (this image shows the finished filter)
This is the code I used, it only shows dimension members which have a fact against them (reduces the list a considerable amount) and by using allmembers at the dimension it also gives me the option to show "All" at the top of the list.
Deploy the new filters and now you can see the distinct list of users and teams, works perfectly and selects every instance (regardless of the SCD2 row)

Writeback partition secuirty in SSAS

I have a writeback partition working pretty well in a cube. The users access it through Excel 2010. At the moment there are 3 measures in the cube. I'd like to only give users access to writeback to 2 of them while being able to read all 3. Is there a way to accomplish this? I'm very much an MDX novice if MDX is involved. Thanks in advance.
The failproof way to prevent those users from writing to your measure is by including those in a special Role with writeback access. In the tab "Cell Data", check the box "Enable read/write permissions", and in the field below "Allow reading and writing of cube content" you can set an expression to limit the write measures, such as:
(Measures.CurrentMember IS [Measures].[X] OR Measures.CurrentMember IS [Measures].[Y])
In the upper field, that enables read access, allow access to all three measures:
(
Measures.CurrentMember IS [Measures].[X] OR
Measures.CurrentMember IS [Measures].[Y] OR
Measures.CurrentMember IS [Measures].[Z]
)
They will have a weird message saying that the cell was blocked, but at least you'll prevent them from writing to your beloved measure.
Another approach would be: create a Calculated measure ([Measures].[ZZ]) based on the one you want to hide ([Measures].[Z]). SSAS won't let the user writeback on a calculated measure. Make sure you hide the original by marking it VISIBLE = 0.
#mmarie is correct...if the measures are all in the same partition, then you'll need to move the 2 for writeback into a separate measure group. You can do this by creating separate views in the relational DW or via named queries in the DSV. Since both measure groups will have the same dimensionality (because they are based on the same table) SSDT will give you a warning - just ignore it ;-)

Access system tables in calculation

Is there a way to access system tables in a SSAS cube calcuation?
For example the following query can be executed on a SSAS cube to return a last processed date:
SELECT LAST_DATA_UPDATE FROM $System.MDSCHEMA_CUBES WHERE CUBE_NAME = 'Cube'
How would one access this information in a calculation?
Background: We were using ASSP before (a third party sproc) to get the last cube processed date. Recently, this sproc threw an exception on one of our cubes and caused SSAS to go down. Using the above line of MDX did not have this behavior. I would rather not have our cube depend on third party code so I am looking for a way to access LAST_DATA_UPDATE in a calc for a specific cube name.
I usually include a detached Dimension in my cubes e.g. ".Cube Information" which includes attributes like this. Other useful attributes could expose the currency of the data e.g. when did the last underlying ETL process complete, or the release/build of your cube.
I feed this "Cube Information" dimension from a SQL view which returns a single row with whatever data is needed - you could use your SELECT statement. It also needs to return a Key column with a fixed value e.g. 1.
By "detached" I mean the "Cube Information" dimension has no entries in the Cube Dimension Relationship tab.
In the cube Calculation script, I assign the DEFAULT_MEMBER property for that dimension to the fixed Key value from the SSAS view.
Any client tool can then access those Dimension attributes.

Redgate SQL Data Generator -> Reviewing sqlgen project -> What does "Same as mapped data" mean?

I am reviewing a coworkers sqlgen job and I am unable to figure out what this means in the table generation settings.
Specify number of rows by: "Same as mapped data"
My coworker has this selected on each table, I just need to know what is meant by this I have looked through documentation and been unable to find a definition for this.
I am on version 2 at the moment. Probably not the best question but I need an answer and he is gone for a long period of time and our data is not working correctly with this tool.
The "Same as mapped data" option is only available when you're using an existing table or view as a data source - it just means that the generator will insert all the rows from the source table or view. The other options are:
Numeric value - a set number of rows
Proportion of table - a proportion of the source table/view
Generation time - as much data as the tool can generate in a set time
There's a little more about using an existing table/view as a data source here on the website, but it doesn't have much else useful in it.