SQL Server Management Studio makes it very easy for you to create XMLA-scripts to create or alter cubes, dimensions, etc… But it’s not possible to use Management Studio to create an alter-script that only contains the MDX calculations. Because I needed to resolve a bug in the calculations but the rest of the cube was not ready to be deployed to production yet, I had to create an alter script just for the MDX.

Of course I could have started learning the XMLA-syntax to write a script for this, but I decided to go for the easy way: the BIDSHelper has an option to deploy the MDX to a cube without having to deploy the entire cube.

If you don’t know BIDSHelper, or don’t already have it installed, go to http://www.codeplex.com/bidshelper. This is a must have add-in for all SSAS and SSIS developers!

But as I was allowed to use Management Studio to makes changes to the cubes in the development environment only. So I needed to capture the XMLA script the BIDSHelper executes on the cube, to deploy the same script to the production environment.

That what the profiler is for, not? J

Open the SQL Server Profiler, create a new trace and connect to the analysis services instance. Use a blank template and switch to the tab “Events Selection”. The only event we want to capture here is “Command Begin”.

Click Run.

Now the profiler is ready to capture the XMLA-script, so switch back to Management Studio and use the BIDSHelper to deploy the MDX calculations. When the deploy is finished you can stop the trace.

The profiler should have captured 2 events. The event with subclass “Alter” is the one we need.

Copy the script from the profiler to a new XMLA script in Management Studio.

The last 3 lines (PropertyList) can be deleted.

In the node “ObjectDefinition” you will find your script.

Enjoy!

I came to the conclusion that the server always returned this error after exactly 2 minutes, so it had to be a timeout exception.

The report was kind of big, so tuning it would not really help (enough).

I took me some time to find out which timeout setting to change, because there seem be a lot of them:

There is the Query Execution timeout of the Dataset, a Report Execution timeout, the Connection timeout of IIS, other timeouts in the Report Server Configuration file, …

But the real cause of this timeout is an Execution timeout of Sharepoint.

You can change this timeout setting in the web.config of your Sharepoint site, by default in c\:inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80.

In this web.config you will find an XML node called “httpRuntime”. In this node you have to add an extra tag: executionTimeout=”9000″:

<httpRuntime maxRequestLength=”51200″ executionTimeout=”9000″ />

Save and close the file and do an IISReset. When you run the report again, you won’t get this error anymore.

I also checked the web.config of the Report Manager, but in Native Mode this seems to be the default:

Good luck!

• Opening Keynote by Wesley Backelant and Ritchie Houtmeyers
• Best Practices for SQL Server Consolidation by Tom Van Mulders
• Breaking the ETL world record with Integration Services by Henk van der Valk
• Designing Effective Aggregations in Analysyis Services 2008 by Chris Webb
• High availability for BI DWH by Patrick Tack
• How New.NET Development technologies could change the live of the SQL DBA guy/girl by Gill Cleeren & Kurt Claeys
• Implementing best practices with Policy Based Management by Nico Jacobs
• Introducing to PowerPivot or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Excel by Chris Webb
• Tracking Changes and Data movement in SQL Server 2008 by Dirk Gubbels
• Handling XML in SQL Server by Nico Jacobs

Have fun!

bing brought me to the following great article, where Mosha explains how you can use MDX to create a custom format:
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/mosha/archive/2008/09/26/displaying-duration-values-mdx-expressions-in-format-string.aspx

When you apply this for a calculated member you get something like this:

    CREATE MEMBER CURRENTCUBE.[Measures].[DurationInDays]
     AS [DurationInDays],
    FORMAT_STRING =  
        IIF([Measures].[Duration] < 1
         ,’”0 days” hh:mm:ss’
         ,’”‘ + cstr(int([Measures].[Duration])) + ‘ days” hh:mm:ss’)
    ,
    VISIBLE = 1;

But this brings us to another problem:
This custom format will only display the correct result if [Measures].[Duration] contains decimal seconds.
For more information about the conversion from seconds to decimal seconds, read the following article on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time
In short, you need to divide the number of seconds by 86.400. The resulting number presents the number of days on the left side of the decimal separator and the remaining decimal seconds on the right side.

So the final result will be something like this:

    CREATE MEMBER CURRENTCUBE.[Measures].[DurationInDecimalSeconds]
     AS
        [Measures].[DurationInSeconds] / 86400,
    VISIBLE = 0;  

    CREATE MEMBER CURRENTCUBE.[Measures].[DurationInDays]
     AS [Measures].[DurationInDecimalSeconds],
    FORMAT_STRING =  
        IIF([Measures].[DurationInDecimalSeconds] < 1
         ,’”0 days” hh:mm:ss’
         ,’”‘ + cstr(int([Measures].[DurationInDecimalSeconds])) + ‘ days” hh:mm:ss’)
    ,
    VISIBLE = 1;

If you want this custom format to be displayed in Excel, make sure the connection properties are set correctly to retrieve the number format from the server:

Go to Connection Properties, tab Usage, and check Number Format in the OLAP Server Formatting options.

There is one more thing I would like to tell you about these options: Normally all these options will always be checked by default, but I’ve noticed that when you start from an existing odc-file, this is not the case. So, when you’re used to deliver an odc-file to your users to start analyzing from Excel, you will have to replace this odc-file by an Excel template that connects to the cube, to make sure this option is always on.

There might be a better way to change this behavior for odc-files, but I couldn’t find any. If you know it, please let me know

Enjoy!

The database engine and Analysis Services was already installed on this server. I added the SSIS service without Service Pack and applied SP3 afterwards. When trying to connect, Management Studio returned the following error message:

Connect to SSIS Service on machine “ComputerName” failed:
Error loading type library/DLL.

I found the explanation in the following support article: KB919224

This problem occurs because the installer unregisters the 32-bit Dts.dll file when the installer installs the 64-bit Dts.dll file. The 64-bit Dts.dll file is installed together with SQL Server 2005 SP2. Additionally, the 64-bit Dts.dll file may be installed together with any SSIS hotfix package that contains the 64-bit Dts.dll file.

The solution is to reregister the 32-bit dll’s manually:

%windir%\syswow64\regsvr32 “%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\dts\binn\dts.dll”

%windir%\syswow64\regsvr32 “%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft SQL Server\90\dts\binn\MsDtsSrvrUtil.dll”

For more info and some variations on the same problem, goto KB919224

After installing and configuring R2, I opened Internet Explorer and entered the URL of the Report Manager. In my case: http://localhost/reports_r2

I got a very empty Report Manager :

Okay, something is wrong. I tried to connect to http://localhost/reportserver_r2 :

No access? But I am admin of this PC… Wait a minute. By default, programs are never executed as an administrator in Windows 7 or Vista. That explains it!

Here is how you can solve this:

• Open Internet Explorer as an administrator: click right and select “Run as Administrator”.
• Click “Yes” to allow.

Now, if you don’t want to do this every time you want to use the report manager, follow these steps:

• Add “http://localhost” to the trusted sites.
• On the home page of the report manager click “Folder Settings”, “Security” and make your account “Content Manager”.
• Click “Site Settings”, “Security” and make your account “System Administrator”.
• Problem solved!

For more info: search for “How to: Configure a Report Server for Local Administration on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008” in BooksOnline.

Data Refresh Failed: Unable to retrieve external data for the following connections:

<<connection>>

The data sources may be unreachable, may not be responding, or may have denied you access.

Verify that data refresh is enabled for the trusted file location and that the workbook data authentication is correctly set.

But the file was in an Excel Services Trusted Location and so was the data source.

Finally I found the following error message in the Sharepoint Log (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\LOGS):

Excel Services can not use credential delegation when it is configured to use a trusted subsystem with Windows SharePoint Server

Ok that explains it: when they installed Excel Services on this new machine they did not configure it to use Delegation Mode.

To change Excel Services to use Delegation Mode, you need to use the command line tool stsadm. Execute the following statements in a command window:

Cd C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN

stsadm -o set-ecssecurity -accessmodel delegation -ssp SharedServices1

stsadm -o execadmsvcjobs

iisreset

This should do it. Enjoy!

When they want to add a property of a specific attribute, they just check this item in the field list. By using it this way, you’re kind of building hierarchies between all the selected attributes, therefore all possible relationships must be checked. This of course has a huge performance impact.

There is an easier and better way that also makes loading the data a lot faster: Member Properties. The relationships between Members and their Properties is defined by specifying Attribute Relationships in Analysis Services.

Ever saw that Tooltip in Excel when you’re hovering your mouse over a field in the Pivot Table? This Tooltip shows all available Member Properties.

But you can also display them on columns:

Click right on the field where you would like to display one or more properties for. Under “Show Properties in Report”, select the properties you would like to show.

By using Member Properties the layout will be better and your report will load a lot faster!

Using Attributes:

Using Properties: