I was just wondering if I am one of the few people in the world actually using SSAS, or is it prevalent in IT? There are so few people posting SSAS questions and answers here. Right now I'm running into an issue creating a Data Mining Dimension (model name dropdown is blank) and when I Google the problem I get 4 results. MS did not include it in SQL Server 2010, so is it going away? Are people using PowerPivot instead?
SSAS is there to stay. Microsoft have a 3 tier strategy for BI :
Personnal BI
Team BI
Organizational BI
PowerPivot is both for Personnal and Team, but SSAS is clearly in the Organizationnal slot. You can read all about it there :
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/analysisservices/archive/2011/05/16/analysis-services-vision-amp-roadmap-update.aspx
Related
I am creating a Power BI dashboard using someone else's Power BI dashboard. All I've done right now is used Get Data -> Power BI datasets -> clicked on the dataset that is also used by this other person's dashboard. Then when I click on the Model tab on the left hand side, I see a bunch of SQL servers linked to one another. If I start changing the SQL relationships in the model section within my Power BI Desktop, will that also change the SQL relationships within the other person's Power BI dashboard? I am a new user of Power BI and SQL so apologies if this sounds confusing. I can provide more info if necessary.
Thank you.
When you use Get Data to connect to an existing Power BI Dataset, you aren't copying the dataset. Instead, multiple reports & dashboards will all connect to the same dataset. So, in the event that you have the required permissions, you changing the dataset will change it for the other reports & dashboards (which could break them).
For more information, check out the Shared Dataset information on MS Docs (e.g. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/service-datasets-across-workspaces).
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 am developing an SSAS cube for the product I am working on.
I have faced the below problems:
In the product you can build organization unit chart. This organization unit will be used as a dimension in the cube. In my research I found that I can build a cube grammatically using C#. My question is that what is the best approach to build a dynamic dimension.
In the product, we have a role based permission. A user can see data based on his role. How can I implement this feature in the cube? Currently, any body can read all the data from the cube.
Thank you for your help.
Dynamic dimensions are possible in SSAS. You would be able to show the members based on the roles that are desired. This is done using "Dynamic dimension security". You'd be able to write an MDX in the "Dimension data" tab.
http://bidn.com/Blogs/analysis-services-dynamic-security
Is there anyone who has an idea how i can log user access in SSAS and Power Pivot?
The problem we face that we need to keep track of who is accessing what. it is not enough to save the question when the result set changes over time (SELECT * ... does not result in the same today as yesterday), so the whole or parts result set need to be logged. I can imagine that it is possible to solve for reports created in SSAS, as it is being in a SQL server. Power Pivot and self-service BI, I'm more thoughtful about how it should be done.
If your Power Pivots are stored in a BI-enabled SharePoint site then those Power Pivot workbooks are effectively on a regular SSAS tabular server also. So any logging that you can put in place for an SSAS tabular database you could probably adapt for PowerPivot workbooks. But in the SharePoint SQL Server instance you will also find a database called DefaultPowerPivotServiceApplication[GUID]. In this database you will have a table called [Usage].[Requests] that records who access what file and when.
I was trying my hands on building Cubes using AdventureWorksOlap database. I successfully build what I was trying to do. Now my concern is that I want to deploy the cube to a server so that rest of the team members can use this cube as a datasource while generating their SSRS reports (might be some other tools).
I have heard that SSAS does not allows Sql Authentication. So,
1) how will the members access the cube?
2) What authentication changes do I need to incorporate?
3) How can the other developer using his computer's SSMS access the cube and make changes to it (just like we can do it in the OLTP database)?
4) I need to prepare a dashboard using this cube. Any suggestions on this one.
Thanks in advance.
1) Windows Authentication
2) none.
3) Once the cube is deployed you cant change it. Actually you can change some things like partitions and roles, but you cant add a dimension for example. You need to change the project on BIDS and redeploy it
I would recommend starting with Excel Pivot Tables to learn what type of dashboard you will want to create. By working with the end-users, you can understand what information they want/need to see.
Regarding security, as mentioned, by design cubes use Windows auth only. Here's a blog that talks about circumventing standard security.
Also, I have posted a series of videos on how to create OLAP cubes SSAS in SQL Server 2008 using BIDS. You may find this series helpful.