Migrating or Synchronizing SSAS Changes

Question

Assume you have 2 SSAS databases, DB1 and DB2, that are identical.

Now they branch off. Changes A and B are made to DB1 and changes C and D are made to DB2.

Is there an easy method to migrate changes A and B from DB1 to DB2 without overwriting changes C and D made in DB2?

I'm using SSAS 2005 - does this functionality improve in 2008? Third-party tools that do this?

Answer 1

You might not consider it as "easy", but I've done it a few times via the following method, which had the virtue of being easier than the alternatives of checking every setting in BIDS.

In BIDS you can create a New project and import it from your existing DB1 (and then DB2.) Now you have Solution folders/files for each DB. You can use WinDiff to compare the folders and XML files within them and sync them by hand, if you're bold enough and/or the differences are small enough. You have to use some intelligence and intuition which object IDs you may need to copy/change and which to leave alone.

If you can't get that to work, the WinDiff-generated XML differences should at least remind you and/or point you to what has been changed in BIDS and you can make changes to the DB2 project files by hand via the normal BIDS UI.