MSBI # 27 – SSAS # 8 – Deploying an Analysis Services Project

Continuing from my last post on SSAS in which I have explained how to create cube using simple cube designer , link is MSBI # 21 – SSAS # 7 – Understanding the Cube Designer Tabs in SSAS

Now lets move our direction towards deployment of SSAS Cube from basics !!

To view cube and dimension data for the objects in the Analysis Services Tutorial cube in the Analysis Services Tutorial project, you must deploy the project to a specified instance of Analysis Services and then process the cube and its dimensions. Deploying an Analysis Services project creates the defined objects in an instance of Analysis Services. Processing the objects in an instance of Analysis Services copies data from the underlying data sources into the cube objects

At this point in the development process, you are deploying the cube to an instance of Analysis Services on a development server. When you have finished developing your business intelligence project, you will generally use the Analysis Services Deployment Wizard to deploy to a production server.

In the following task, you review the deployment properties of the Analysis Services Tutorial project and then deploy the project to your local instance of Analysis Services.

To deploy the Analysis Services project

1.In Solution Explorer, right-click the Analysis Services Tutorial project, and then click Properties.

The Analysis Services Tutorial Property Pages dialog box appears and displays the properties of the Active(Development) configuration. You can define multiple configurations, each with different properties. For example, different developers may want to configure the same project to deploy to different development computers and with different deployment properties, such as different database names or processing properties. Notice the value for the Output Path property. This property specifies the location in which the XMLA deployment scripts for the project are saved when a project is built. These are the scripts that are used to deploy the objects in the project to an instance of Analysis Services.

2.In the Configuration Properties node in the left pane, click Deployment.

Review the deployment properties for the project. By default, the Analysis Services Project template configures an Analysis Services project to incrementally deploy all projects to the default instance of Analysis Services on the local computer, to create an Analysis Services database with the same name as the project, and to process the objects after deployment by using the default processing option.

The following image shows the Analysis Services Tutorial Property Pages dialog box.

3.Click Cancel if you do not want to change the value of the Server property. Otherwise, click OK.

4.In Solution Explorer, right-click the Analysis Services Tutorial project, and then click Deploy, or else click Deploy Analysis Services Tutorial on the Build menu.

Business Intelligence Development Studio builds and then deploys the Analysis Services Tutorial project to the specified instance of Analysis Services by using a deployment script. The progress of the deployment is displayed in two windows: the Output window and the Deployment Progress – Analysis Services Tutorial window. The Output window displays the overall progress of the deployment. The Deployment Progress – Analysis Services Tutorial window displays the detail about each step taken during deployment.

Open the Output window, if necessary, by clicking Output on the View menu.

The following image shows the Deployment Progress – Analysis Services Tutorial and Output windows during deployment of the Analysis Services Tutorial project.

5.Review the contents of the Output window and the Deployment Progress – Analysis Services Tutorial window to verify that the cube was built, deployed, and processed without errors.

6.On the Deployment Progress – Analysis Services Tutorial window, expand the Processing Dimension ‘Customer’ completed successfully node, expand the Processing Dimension Attribute ‘Title’ completed successfully node, and then expand the SQL queries 1 node.

7.Double-click the SELECT DISTINCT statement.

The query that was used to process the Title attribute in the Customer dimension appears in the View Details dialog box.

The following image shows the query that was used to process the dimension attribute.

8.Click Close.

9.Collapse the Processing Dimension ‘Customer’ completed successfully node and then expand the Processing Cube ‘Analysis Services Tutorial’ completed successfully node, expand the Processing Measure Group ‘Internet Sales’ completed successfully node, expand the Processing Partition ‘Internet Sales’ completed successfully node, and then expand the SQL queries 1 node.

The query that was used to process the Internet Sales partition in the Analysis Services Tutorial cube appears.

10. Hide the Deployment Progress – Analysis Services Tutorial window by clicking the Auto Hide icon on the toolbar of the window.

11. Hide the Output window by clicking the Auto Hide icon on the toolbar of the window.

Browsing the Deployed Cube 

Browsing a deployed cube helps you understand the modifications that you should make to improve the functionality of the cube. For example, you may have to define dimension member sort orders, delete unnecessary dimension attributes, define new user hierarchies, modify existing user hierarchies, or configure measure properties. After you deploy a cube, cube data is viewable on the Browser tab in Cube Designer, and dimension data is viewable on the Browser tab in Dimension Designer.

In the following task, you browse the Analysis Services Tutorial cube and each of its dimensions to determine the types of changes that need to be made to improve the functionality of the cube.

To browse the deployed cube

1.Switch to Dimension Designer for the Customer dimension by clicking the Customer tab in Business Intelligence Development Studio or by double-clicking Customer in the Dimensions node in Solution Explorer and then click the Browser tab.

The State Province Name – Geography user hierarchy appears in the Hierarchy list on the toolbar of the Browser tab; the name of the current level, (All), appears immediately underneath the toolbar; and the sole member of the (All) level appears in the browser pane. By default, the name of the only member of the (All) level is All and is visible. You can change the name of this level or hide it, such as for a scenario dimension. In Lesson 3, you will change the name of the member of the (All) level for several of the dimensions in the Analysis Services Tutorial cube.

2.In the Level and Members pane, expand the All member of the (All) level to display the members of the State Province Name level. Expand the Alabama member of this level to display the Geography level. Expand the 280 member of the Geography level to view the member at the Customer level.

The Level and Members pane of Dimension Designer makes it easy to view the members of each level within the user hierarchy that the Cube Wizard designs so that you can determine the functionality changes that you need to make. Notice that this hierarchy does not have a city level defined, that the members of the Geography level are the DimGeography table key values, and that the Customer level displays the customer’s e-mail address instead of the customer’s name. You will modify this hierarchy in Lesson 3.

The following image shows the expanded hierarchy in the Level and Members pane.

3.On the toolbar of Dimension Designer for the Customer dimension, select English Country Region Name in the Hierarchy list, and then expand the All member in the Level and Members pane.

The attribute hierarchy of the English Country Region Name attribute appears. By default, each attribute of a dimension has a hierarchy of two levels: an (All) level, and a level that contains each attribute member. The name of the second level is the attribute name itself. In Lesson 3, you will learn how to define user-defined hierarchies based on attribute hierarchies.

The following image shows the hierarchy of the English Country Region Name attribute.

4.In Solution Explorer, double-click Time in the Dimensions folder.

The Time dimension opens in Dimension Designer in BI Development Studio.

5.In Dimension Designer for the Time dimension, click the Browser tab.

The user hierarchy CalendarYear – CalendarSemester – CalendarQuarter – EnglishMonthName – FullDateAlternateKey appears in the Hierarchy list.

6.Expand the All member to display the members of the Calendar Year level. Expand the 2003 member to display the members of the Calendar Semester level. Expand the 1 member to display the members of the Calendar Quarter level. Expand the 2 member to display the members of the English Month Name level. Expand the June member to display the members of the FullDateAlternateKey level.

In Lesson 3, you will modify this user hierarchy to increase its user-friendliness, by defining friendly names for semesters and quarters, and by defining simple dates instead of dates that include time values.

The following image shows the hierarchy expanded to display the FullDateAlternateKey attributes.

7.Switch to Cube Designer in BI Development Studio by clicking the designer tab for the Analysis Services Tutorial cube. Select the Browser tab, and then click Reconnect on the toolbar of the designer. Alternatively, click the Click here to try loading the browser again link that appears in the middle of the browser pane.

The left pane of the designer shows the metadata for the Analysis Services Tutorial cube. Notice that Perspective and Language options are available on the toolbar of the Browser tab. Notice also that the Browser tab includes two panes to the right of the Metadata pane: the upper pane is the Filter pane, and the lower pane is the Data pane.

The following image highlights the individual panes in Cube Designer.

8.In the Metadata pane, expand Measures, expand Internet Sales, and then drag the Sales Amount measure to the Drop Totals or Detail Fields Here area of the Data pane.

Notice that the measure does not display in a standard currency format. In Lesson 3, you will learn how to modify the formatting of cube measures.

In the Metadata pane, expand Customer.

Notice that all the attribute hierarchies in the Customer dimension appear in the Metadata pane. The Customer dimension list also includes the State Province Name – Geography user hierarchy. You can use any one or more of the attribute hierarchies to dimension the cube. However, having so many hierarchies visible for each dimension at the same level can be overwhelming to a business user. In Lesson 3 you will learn how to group these hierarchies into display folders so that you can navigate them more easily.

9.Drag the English Country Region Name attribute hierarchy to the Drop Row Fields Here area of the Data pane.

You are now viewing Internet Sales dimensioned by the country of each customer. The following image shows this dimensioning.

10. In the Metadata pane, collapse Customer, collapse Measures, expand Product, right-click Product Line, and then click Add to Column Area.

You are now viewing Internet Sales dimensioned by the country and by the product line. However, notice that each product line is represented by a single letter instead of by the full name of the product line. In Lesson 3, you will learn how to add a named calculation in the data source view and modify the properties of this dimension attribute to increase the user-friendliness of product line names.

The following image shows Internet Sales dimensioned by country and product line.

11. In the Metadata pane, collapse Product, expand Order Date, and then drag Order Date.Calendar Quarter to the Drop Filter Fields Here area of the Data pane.

12. In the filter fields area of the Data pane, click the down arrow next to Order Date.Calendar Quarter, clear the check box next to (All), select the check box next to 1, and then click OK.

You are now viewing Internet Sales dimensioned by country and by product line for the first calendar quarter. However, you are actually viewing the values for the first calendar quarter of every calendar year, not for any particular calendar year. In Lesson 3, you will learn how to use composite keys to uniquely identify each calendar quarter so that you can differentiate calendar quarters by year.

The following image shows Internet Sales dimensioned by country and product line for the first calendar quarter of every year.

13. In the Metadata pane, expand Order Date.Calendar Year, and then expand CalendarYear.

14. Right-click the 2002 member of the Calendar Year attribute hierarchy, and then click Add to Subcube Area.

The 2002 member of the Order Date dimension appears in the Filter pane, above the Data pane, and limits the values that are displayed in the Data pane. This is effectively equal to the WHERE clause in a Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) query statement.

The values for calendar quarter 1 for sales of each product line over the Internet, dimensioned by country, are now limited to the year 2002, as shown in the following image.

Hope this helps !!

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