Tagged Questions

SQL Server Analysis Services, an OLAP server bundled with SQL Server by Microsoft since version 7.0

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19
votes
2answers
3k views

What does a DBA have to know about SSAS?

I've seen a lot of material covering the business aspect of SSAS, but not really much about the important aspects of administration and management. From the point of view of administering an instance ...
14
votes
3answers
993 views

Dynamically Define a Range in a Dimension

I have an issue that i face every time i decide to build a cube, and i haven't found a way to over come it yet. the issue is how to allow the user to define Range of things automatically without ...
14
votes
1answer
752 views

Recalculate Time Dimension in BIDS

I'm using BIDS to create a cube in SSAS 2008 r2. I used the wizard to create a time dimension. Part of that configuration is selecting a date range. After creation, I realized that I needed a wider ...
10
votes
3answers
147 views

Is backing a website by a SQL Server 2012 OLAP cube considered reasonable?

I have been tasked with architecting a solution for a large retail chain. They want to allow each of its 1.2 million customers to log on to a web site to see the distribution of recent purchases ...
10
votes
1answer
227 views

MDX Query for RANK regardless of hierarchy

I'm hoping to add a calculation to my SSAS Cube (SSAS 2012) that will show the relative rank of whatever the current member is against all other members in that grouper, without specifying the ...
7
votes
1answer
136 views

Dynamic Dimension Security

I have a cube in SSAS 2012 with about 30 dimensions, one of which is Company. The Company dimension contains a list of companies, of which there are several hundred in the cube. Our security model ...
7
votes
0answers
99 views

SQL Server Analysis Studio naive Bayes attribute has too many states

I'm using SQL Server Analysis Studio and I'm trying to train a naive Bayes classifier. I've got an attribute called "item description" that basically represents products you can buy at a store. I've ...
6
votes
3answers
197 views

Find material for improvement in Microsoft BI

Which websites, books etc. can you recommend me to improve my basic knowledge in Microsoft Business Intelligence 2008, SSAS, SSIS and SSRS? Please remember that I'm a newbie in technical BI tool. If ...
6
votes
2answers
170 views

Few Questions about SSAS Cubes

I am newbie to SSAS 2012 and here are my questions: Can we have measures of complex types (table)? Is it possible to order the results by a specific measure or attribute? My cube can be modeled as ...
6
votes
1answer
723 views

Medians, Modes, Percentiles and OLAP

I'm newbie trying to wrap my head around OLAP, and I have a few questions. Question 1: Can an OLAP cube store medians, modes, percentiles? Question 2: Can an user-written MDX query return a summary ...
5
votes
1answer
216 views

How do aggregations work in SSAS?

I understand the concept of pre-aggregating data so that multi dimensional queries perform faster, but the descriptions I've seen of aggregations in SSAS seem to imply that an aggregation only ...
5
votes
1answer
332 views

Custom aggregation for non-leaf level nodes to avoid double counting

I have a fact table with the following columns: WorkerName OrderId NumberOfPackagesPerOrder Note that neither WorkerName nor OrderId is unique in this fact table. Multiple users could work on a ...
4
votes
2answers
311 views

How to balance SQL Server memory with SQL Server Analysis Services memory

We have many systems that have the same configuration One Server (virtual or physical) Running SQL Server (SQL) and SQL Server Analysis Server (AS) multiple cores 16gb RAM Each night the SQL ...
4
votes
2answers
716 views

SSAS queries time out when Windows File System Cache drops

We have a SQL 2008 Analysis Services instance on Windows 2003 that is experiencing near-daily performance issues (query timeouts) during peak activity. A second identical instance queried from the ...
4
votes
1answer
578 views

SSAS Cube in Excel - Show only applicable rows with KPI?

I have a cube built in SSAS 2008r2. I'm exposing it for the moment through an excel PivotTable. I recently added a KPI to the cube, and when I show the KPI in my PivotTable interface it causes ...
4
votes
1answer
225 views

Dimension Help - Deciding Fact or Dimension

We have the following Dim and Facts: Customer Dim: SCD Type 2, Info about the customer ie first purchase date, name, address, etc Product Dim: SCD Type 2, about our products Customer Snapshot ...
4
votes
2answers
804 views

How do I stop refresh conflicts between Proactive Caching of facts and timed refresh of Dimensions in a SQL Server Analysis Service 2005 OLAP cube?

I have a SSAS 2005 OLAP cube which we've very nearly made into a ROLAP cube using a mixture of proactive caching for the fact partitions and timed refreshes for the dimension data. There are two fact ...
3
votes
2answers
871 views

Connecting to MySQL database from Analysis Services

I need to know whether it is possible or not to get data from a MySQL database and create a Cube in Analysis Services 2008. If so, tell me how to connect to MySQL Database from Analysis Services.
3
votes
3answers
5k views

SSAS Dimensions Hierarchy causes deployment errors

I've set up a Data Source Connection to the Adventure Works DW database using the services credentials. I'm creating a dimension using the DimDate table. To simplify things I'm using only the ...
3
votes
2answers
388 views

Combining retail sales and payment OLAP cubes

I'm using SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition Analysis Services (SSAS). I'm trying to build cubes from a retail OLTP database that can answer these kinds of questions: List down all products that were ...
3
votes
1answer
72 views

Time as a measure

Is it possible to have times as measures in a cube? We're trying to view employee start times by day, aggregating as an average over time, but even with a No Aggregation measure type I'm getting an ...
3
votes
1answer
214 views

How do I display subtotals in cube browser in SSAS 2012 (Sql Server Data Tools)?

Apparently this feature was available in previous versions but has now been removed. What are some alternatives?
3
votes
1answer
71 views

Simple filesystem cube

I'm trying to understand cubes so thought I would create a simple datamart to represent my filesystem. So my question is, if I wanted to create a simple datamart to represent my filesystem, how would ...
3
votes
1answer
122 views

SQL Calculation based on 'similar' rows within table

I'm using SQL Server 2008 R2, building a fact table for SSAS. I can therefore accept solutions to this via either SQL query to SSIS task. Let's say I have a fact table that looks a little like this, ...
3
votes
1answer
161 views

Connect tables in a cube based on historical data

So this may be the wrong place, and may seem pretty basic, but I'm new to building up cubes, so please forgive me. Imagine a setup described by the following: CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Orders] ( ...
3
votes
1answer
64 views

Analysis service database security at application level

I have got a SSAS Cube, we have written an windows application which would issue MDX queries to access the data from the cube and show it in the reports . This windows application is a licensed ...
3
votes
1answer
471 views

How to simplify SSAS deployment from DEV to PRO environment

Here is my issue: In my company, there is a team of developper who creates cubes, dimensions(...) in SSAS in a DEV environment (let's call it SSASDEV). This environment is bounded to a SQL Server ...
3
votes
1answer
176 views

Help on designing SSAS Dim and Fact table

I am having a problem designing a Dim and Fact Table for the following problem. I have a Pivot Grid with data as below : USER | RELATED USER | RELATIONSHIP | PHONE NUMBER ...
3
votes
1answer
75 views

Should I snowflake or duplicate it across my facts?

I'm building up a data warehouse to be used by SSAS to create cubes on, and I'm debating between two possible schemas. In my warehouse, I've got two different fact tables that tracking daily changes ...
3
votes
1answer
73 views

SQL Server Analysis Services - where do I store user logins?

If I would like to create a Business Intelligence (BI) system using SSAS, with SSRS getting data from the SSAS cube. Which would be the best possible option to store users' credentials used with ...
2
votes
1answer
90 views

How to handle dimension hierarchies that re-join?

The obvious example is a time dimension where days roll up by day>month>year but also roll up days>weeks>year. BIDS complains about it, but I see no other way to model the situation.
2
votes
3answers
619 views

SQL Analysis Services - SSAS

Do you know what the best practices would be regarding SSAS and having real-time reports. I am not sure if we should be pulling data off our live database or using SSIS to move data periodically to a ...
2
votes
1answer
392 views

Why does an AS cube rebuild use so much TempDB?

I have a 50GB SQL 2008 database (only 36 of that is data) with a 24GB Analysis Server cube that rebuilds nightly. The cube rebuilds have been using more and more of the TempDB on the SQL server each ...
2
votes
1answer
210 views

Need to filter dimension where two attributes are the same

I've obfuscated the scenario but the general idea still applies, so if the schema seems retarded, it probably is in this example... Let's say I have a Student dimension, and in it are two attributes ...
2
votes
1answer
104 views

SSAS Drillthough Limit

There is a limit of 10,000 rows that can be returned for a drillthrough rowset in recent version of SSAS. I'm concerned about the risk of of returning partial results without warning if the selection ...
2
votes
1answer
741 views

Security permission to only read SSAS Cube with Excel

I have an SSAS database set up on a SQL Server 2008 server. I have a Role set up with a group of users that I want to be able to access the Cubes in that database. I set up "Read definition" and ...
2
votes
1answer
925 views

SCD Type 2 Dimension -> Is this the correct layout for a type 2 scd with this type of data present?

Here is an example picture of my layout. As you can see I have my SCD types present (status/startdate/enddate/businesskey). My key is a surrogate key that identifies each record. My problem is ...
2
votes
1answer
434 views

Difference between SSAS 2005 and SSAS 2008

I'm asking this question since i'm planning to book a seminar, but the provider told me that they only offer trainings for SSAS 2008 or as individual training which are expensive. So my question: ...
2
votes
2answers
79 views

How can I dynamically back up all SSAS databases on a given instance?

I want to dynamically back up all the databases on a given SSAS instance using a SQL Agent job (which would most likely involve executing an SSIS package). It is imperative that this is a dynamic ...
2
votes
1answer
63 views

Backup on an empty SSAS database hangs

I created an SSIS package to iterate through all databases on an SSAS instance. It grabs the DatabaseId using AMO in a vbscript, then generates the XMLA to backup each database. Most databases ...
2
votes
1answer
22 views

Debugging SSAS Timeouts

I have a drill-through problem apparently related to security. Users in one role are seeing timeout failures when trying to invoke a drill-through action. They have permission on the action through ...
2
votes
1answer
232 views

Cube Designer Aggregation Wizard Optimization Zero Percent Every Time

I am pretty new to SSAS. I have a cube (SSAS 2008 R2) that once had aggregations that has been created using the Aggregation Design wizard. When changing schema a few dimensions, i encountered an ...
2
votes
1answer
137 views

MDX misunderstanding: complex FROM clause

I have a MDX query which syntax is familiar to me: SELECT NON EMPTY { [Measures].[Amount] } ON COLUMNS, NON EMPTY { ([Projects].[Id].[Id].ALLMEMBERS * [Priorities].[Id].[Id].ALLMEMBERS ) } ...
2
votes
2answers
1k views

Datawarehouse Design: Combined Date Time dimension vs. Separate Day and Time dimensions and timezones

We are just starting design for a new data warehouse and we're trying to design how our date and time dimensions will work. We need to be able to support multiple timezones (probably at least GMT, ...
2
votes
1answer
418 views

Real Time SQL Server Analysis Services Cube Processing Report

I would like to know if there is a way to generate a report to determine which SQL Server Analysis Services cubes are processing using SQL Server Reporting Services? I would like to be able to run ...
2
votes
1answer
108 views

SSAS 2000 vs 2008 Cube processing times

I have been told that we can greatly reduce our processing times by rebuilding our 2000 cubes in 2008. I was told the difference is substantial (2hrs down to 20mins). Is this true? If so, why?
2
votes
1answer
558 views

ParallelPeriod returning null for Feb. 29 in date dimension

I have a calendar date dimension backed by a physical table of dates (originally created on SQL Server 2000, hence the datetime instead of date): CREATE TABLE [dbo].[PostDate_Dimension]( ...
2
votes
1answer
268 views

Displaying parent attributes alongside child attributes

SSAS - Parent Child hierarchy - displaying other Parent attributes alongside Child Attributes For example: Employee Table +-----+-------+------+---------------+ | KEY | NAME | ROLE | MANAGERKEY ...
2
votes
1answer
179 views

SSAS Dimension Help - Finding Values Not In the Dimension using Role Playing

I have a Fact / Fact Less table that has a list of Products likley to be purchased by client. Client ID Product ID 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 5 etc... I need to to allow ...
2
votes
0answers
30 views

How to remove leaf member values?

I have a dimension hierarchy that is related to multiple fact tables with different granularities. In the case of one fact table, it relates to the middle level of a three level hierarchy. When you ...

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