I have an analysis services database which consists of more than 8 cubes. From that, I want one single cube to be moved in to another analysis services database (this database should have only that cube). Instead of doing all the cube work from scratch, is there a easy way to achieve this ?
An easy way to achieve this would be to just copy all files of your BIDS project to a new folder. Then open the new project in BIDS, delete all dimensions and cubes not needed, change the deployment target, and redeploy.
Related
I have an SSAS cube in UAT with multiple changes. I need to now deploy these changes to each cube in live (10+ cubes all with the exact same schema). Then process each cube. What is the best way of doing this?
Currently we do this manually by opening up the changed UAT cube in BIDS, changing the Deployment destination (to point to each live cube), and click Deploy.
Can an SSIS package with a for loop calling an AS Processing Task handle this, for example? Are there XMLA (I don't know much about it) scripts that may be able to?
Thanks!
From SQL Server Management you can save the process of a cube as an XMLA script. Then you can either process it by executing the script or even create a job in SSMS. msdn.microsoft SSAS Administrative Tasks
I hope this is a quick yes or no question and I believe the answer is yes, but wanted to confirm with someone more knowledgeable than I.
First the background story: We've just started using OLAP cubes where I work and have one setup each for financial, staffing, and project data (3 cubes) in our new ERP system. We have several offices where this data is needed, but we don't want for them to have access to the other office's data. There are only a few individuals in the organization that have access rights to these 3 online cubes.
For distributing the appropriate set of data for the individual offices, the solution I've currently come up with is to create offline cubes that are connected to pre-configured excel files (using Excel 2013 Standard or Plus). Each offline cube is created via the "CREATE GLOBAL CUBE" MDX command and then is filtered via one of the dimensions (see below).
This solution has not been very effective as these offline cubes use absolute paths in the excel connection files. We've been remotely connecting to the users desktops to reconnect the offline cube that gets distributed to them. This process is not very effective as it seems excel sometimes doesn't want to reconnect to the offline cube and in some instances simply won't work.
The question: Is there a way to create an online cube that has been pre-filtered on a particular dimension so that I can allow access to their online cube for only their data rather than using offline cubes?
I've listed the commands I'm using to create the offline cube below as an example of what I'm looking for.
Cheers
CREATE GLOBAL CUBE
[Offline Cube Name]
STORAGE
'C:\SomeFile.cub'
FROM [Online Cube Name] (
MEASURE [Online Cube Name].[Some Measure 1],
MEASURE [Online Cube Name].[Some Measure 2],
DIMENSION [Online Cube Name].[Dimension].[Office Name]
(
LEVEL [Organization],
MEMBER [Organization].&[Office Name]
)
);
If you have been completely successful with local cubes count yourself lucky as they are tricky. But I would recommend you avoid them.
Instead setup role-based security in the cube and let users connect live. If you have a list of Active Directory users or groups per office and want to create one role in SSAS per office follow this approach. If you prefer to add a few hidden tables to the cube that drive security then use the dynamic security approach.
I have 3 databases with the same structure, but different data, since they are from different clients.
Now, I have an existing SSAS project. Its Data Source Views, Cubes and Dimensions can only use or access one DB.
What I want is to be able to use multiple databases with the same structure, and create a cube using them.
Each client must also be able to use the cube, but they can only see their own data.
Are these possible? Can you please provide insights and some useful references?
Easy Solution
The easiest way to solve this would be to just have three Analysis Services databases. Setup would be easy, you would have just three structurally identical databases, and no need to manage security within the cubes, only access to the cube. It is easy to manage, and difficult to make errors allowing users to get access to data they should not see. And as nobody should be allowed to access data form other companies, there is no need for one common cube.
Just deploy your project three times using a different Analysis Services database name.
Then change the data source object of the deployed databases to point to the different relational databases.
For the first step, in Business Intelligence Development Studio, right click on the project node in Solution Explorer, select the bottom entry ("Properties"), and then select "Deployment". Here, you can enter the server to deploy the solution to, as well as the database name. After closing the dialog, right click on the project node again, and select Deploy. Repeat this step, using three different database names.
Then, connect to your Analysis Services server in SQL Server Management Studio, open each database, and edit the data source object of each database to point to its relational database.
After that, re-process the Analysis Services database.
Alternatively, you can also do everything in BIDS, i. e. between changing the target database for deployment and deploying, change the data source there, and after deployment, possibly, re-process the Analysis Services database.
If you assume you will need to change and deploy the cube definition several times, you probably could make use of configurations which you can edit in the project properties dialog using the "Configuration Manager" button. You would have three configurations, one for each target Analysis Services database. You could select one of the configurations in the dropdown list in the toolbar for each deployment without the need to edit properties again and again.
If you need to do this often, I think it would not be difficult to automate the steps to change the database and reprocess the cube, either via XMLA, or via AMO, or in PowerShell. But to implement this this would be another question.
More Complex Solution
If you really want to have everything in one cube, then you will have to have a union of the tables from the different sources in the data source view. If all three relational databases are on the same SQL Server instance, you can define this either as a named query in the data source view, or as a view in one of the databases, maybe even better as a view or table in a separate relational database. You can access a table or view from another database running in the same instance of SQL Server in the form NameOfDB.Schema.Tablename.
In case these databases are on different instances, you could use linked servers.
And of course, you will have to manage the keys in these different databases so that the same dimension entry has the same key, and different dimension entries have different keys. And you will have to set up security in the cube so that no user can see data that is not meant to be seen.
While you could use different data source objects in Analysis Services for different tables or named queries in Analysis Services, each of these only uses one, as actually, this is one SQL statement that is sent to this source. And dimensions need to be based on one data source view object like one named query, view, or table. For fact tables, you could get around this using partitions, but not for dimensions.
I am new to SSAS, and exploring Partitioning. My data source is very large (web logs):a few hundred million records.
I would like to define my cube IN BIDS, and create a SSIS Package to create partitions. For now, I am Generating The MDX to Create & process the partitions, and Executing them in SSMS.
I find that this is faster and less error prone them manually creating the partitions using the BIDS UI.
I am trying to understand the expected workflow: because every time I go back to BIDS, and make changes to measures & process the cube the partitions I created in SSMS are deleted and the old partitions I created in BIDS are re-published.
What I would like to be able to do is Refresh my partitions from the server to BIDS. Is This possible? If not, what type of workflow is expected in this case?
Thanks!
Partitions are part of the cube structure, and if you change these outside of BIDS, then you change the structure of the deployed Analysis Services database. BIDS keeps the definition of the structure locally as a set of XML files, the partition definitions are contained in a file with the extension .partitions. If you deploy an Analysis Services project from BIDS, it updates the deployed Analysis Services database to match the structure of the local XML files, thus overwriting whatever you changed outside of BIDS.
You can get a deployed database back to an Analysis Services project as follows: Open BIDS, click File/New/Project, and then select "Import Analysis Services Database" from the "Business Intelligence Projects" project type, and select the directory where you want to save the project files locally in the bottom part of the dialog. As soon as you click OK, a wizard opens that allows you to select the server and Analysis Services database to get the definition from, and when you click Next, starts writing it to the directory that you selected.
Partitions are a part of your cube structure. You should create the partitions in BIDS and then process them based on your requirement using SSIS or SSMS.
I have performed ETL operation and i created a data warehouse and i loaded the data to it and so far its fine.. my ETL seems to work allright since my data warehouse contains all the data i needed. And then i created an SSAS project from my data warehouse following the AdventureWorks DW example. I deployed the cube and processed it. Then i tried to browse the cube. But here is a problem, it seems as the members do exist but the measures are empty. because my dimensions contain the data but when i throw the measures to it .. it is just gonna be empty cells. What causes this?
In the cube designer, check the "Dimension Usage" tab. Make sure that the intersection between a dimension and a measure group has something there (If there's meant to be a relation).
What happens if you drag & drop the measure to the browser, without any dimensions?
Also what version of SSAS are you on, is it 2005? That had IgnoreUnrelatedDimensions set differently to 2008 I think..
Make sure you've linked your dimensions with measure groups (i.e. that you fact table references you dimension tables).
Also make sure you have foreign keys defined in your data warehouse (as soon as wizards in Visual Studio use them when proposing cube structure).
In order to deploy to a different dwh server
Right Click on the CubeNAME
Go to properties
In Configuration properties > Go to Deployment
In Processing option - change Default to - Do not Process.
if in case the DB is very large and keep huge data, it will get deployed and you can process it later.
For Target - Set name of Server
Click on OK, Deploy and later process