Davy's Blog » BI

XMLA script to deploy MDX Calculations

Davy — Wed, 05 May 2010 16:13:21 +0000

At a current project I needed to create a deploy script for the MDX calculations of a cube.

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!

Reporting Services Timeout in Sharepoint

Davy — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:05:53 +0000

Recently someone asked me to check a Reporting Services report that always resulted in an Unexpected Error. The report server was configured for Sharepoint Integrated Mode.

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″:

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!

SSAS: Custom format string for “duration” using MDX

Davy — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:38:20 +0000

I recently struggled with the following challenge in Analysis Services:
In one of the fact tables there was a field duration which actually was a duration of a certain status in seconds. I needed to display this in a readable format, like “2 days 22:15:59″.

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!

Connect to SSIS Service failed: Error loading type library/DLL

Davy — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:44:08 +0000

After installing SQL Server Integration Services on an existing 64-bit SQL Server, I was unable to connect to SSIS using Management Studio.

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

Administrator has no access to the Report Manager (SQL2008 R2 and Windows7/Vista)

Davy — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:19:53 +0000

Today I wanted to start playing around with the new Report Manager of SQL 2008 R2.

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.

Next SQLUG-event: Business Intelligence in a SAAS (software as a service) Environment – April 29th, 2009

Davy — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:40:00 +0000

This event is brought to you by InfoSupport and handles the implementation of BI within a SAAS concept.

Agenda Oscar Zonneveldand and Josquin Booij from InfoSupport will discuss the following topics:

1. The Business Case
2. The Functional and Technical Architecture
3. Near-realtime BI
4. The Real world

About the speakers

Oscar Zonneveld is a BI and Datawarehouse Architect at Info Support’s Business Intelligence en Datawarehousing Competence Centre.
Josquin Booij is a Database Architect at Info Support’s Business Intelligence en Datawarehousing Competence Centre.

They have a combined experience spanning in excess of 10 years within the Financial, HRM, Healthcare and Indutrial sectors.

Right now they are implementing a near-realtime solution in a SAAS within the HRM Industry.

The session will take place in the offices of InfoSupport in Mechelen.

Schedule:

18u00	Registration and welcome
18u30	Session start
21u30	Session end

This is a free event, but registration is required.

Kimball University: Microsoft SQL Server Comes of Age for Data Warehousing

Davy — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:27:00 +0000

I justed wanted to share this interesting article:

With new compression, partitioning and star schema optimization features,
Microsoft’s SQL Server 2008 is catching up with the state of the industry in data warehousing.
Here’s why these three capabilities are crucial for scalability and performance on any platform.

By Warren Thornthwaite

Read the full article here.

SSAS: Class not registered (Exception from HRESULT: 0×80040154 (REGDB_E_CLASSNOTREG))

Davy — Wed, 09 May 2007 08:03:17 +0000

Today I got this error while trying to browse a cube from the Business Intelligence Development Studio:

The detailed error information told me that the connection failed, because the server actively refused it. Connecting from another pc worked perfectly, so it had to be a problem with my computer.

To solve this problem I needed to reinstall the OWC Component (Microsoft Office 2003 Web Components)
You can find the download here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7287252c-402e-4f72-97a5-e0fd290d4b76&DisplayLang=en

Problem opening report solution: Project item ‘#itemn°#’ does not represent a file.

Davy — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 11:11:38 +0000

Today I had some problems with a report solution created in Visual Studio 2005:

After I got the latest version out of SourceSafe, I could not open it anymore. The error message was “Project item ’4294967294′ does not represent a file.”

Searching for this error on the internet I came to this solution:

- Open the .rptproj file in notepad (or another text editor) and delete the line that begins with “$base64$”
- Open the solution
- Delete the source control bindings
- Add it to source control again

- Done!

Davy Knuysen

SQL Server Reporting Services: Create and Call a Custom Assembly

Davy — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 03:51:00 +0000

In one of my previous articles I explained how to use embedded code in SQL Server Reporting Services. The possibility to add embedded code to a report, is a very powerfull feature to add some custom functionality to your report.
But sometimes it might be necessary to add some custom functionality that is too complicated for embedded code to handle efficiently, or you need to access the same function from multiple reports, or you would like to write you code in C#…
In one of these cases you should develop a custom assembly to call from your report.

Let’s start with a simple example and develop a function PercentageToColor() to return a color based on a numeric value representing a percentage.

namespace MyAssembly

{

public class Colors

{

public string PercentageToColor(double percentage)

{

string returnValue = string.Empty;

if (percentage < 20)

{

returnValue = “red”;

}

else if (percentage < 80)

{

returnValue = “blue”;

}

else

{

returnValue = “green”;

}

return returnValue;

}

Once you’ve compiled your class you need to copy the resulting assembly to the directory in which it is accessible from within your report:

· To use it in the report designer, you need to copy it to:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies

· To make it available for reports that have been deployed to the report server, you need to copy it to:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting Services\ReportServer\bin

Before you can access your custom assembly you have to reference the assembly: Open the report properties (Menu: Report – Report Properties) and select the References tab.

Browse to your assembly and define a Class Name and an Instance Name. (The Class Name and the Instance Name or only for non-static methods). Make sure to prefix your class name with the assembly name.

Now you can call the methods in your assembly from your report, using an expression:

· To call a static method: =..

· To call an instance method: =Code..

So in our example this would be: =Code.TestColor.PercentageToColor(Fields!Percentage.Value)

That’s it! You’ve just created and called a custom assembly from your report…

In one of my future articles I will explain how to pass parameters to the class constructor and I will also tell something about SSRS and .Net Permissions…

Davy Knuysen