MS SSAS 2008 Unleashed - Chapter 9. Multidim - Models and BI Development Studio

Configuring and Deploying a Project So That You Can Browse the Cube

After you have created a cube—data source, DSV, and dimensions—you will be almost ready to deploy your project to the Analysis Services. First, you configure the project to determine how the BI Dev Studio will build and deploy the project. Then, after you deploy the project, you can browse your cubes and verify that the numbers you expect are correct.

Configuring a Project

To configure your project for deployment, you use the ProjectName Property Pages dialog box. Right-click the project name in the Solution Explorer. From the resulting menu, select Properties. For our sample database. you would see the FoodMart 2008 Property Pages dialog box, as shown in Figure 9.18.

Under Configuration in the navigation pane, select one of the three options available: Build, Debugging, and Deployment.

The Build Option

For our FoodMart 2008 sample shown in Figure 9.18, Build is the selection you see.

In the Results pane, you see the Deployment Server Edition property. The edition we used for our sample FoodMart 2008 is the Developer edition. Other possible values are Enterprise, Evaluation, and Standard. Because some Analysis Services features are not available in certain editions, your deployment attempt can result in an error reporting that the feature is not supported.

Be sure to set your project Deployment Server Edition and Deployment Server Version properties to the edition and version of the instance of Analysis Services you are deploying the project to.

The Deployment Option

If you select Deployment, you will see deployment options in the ProjectName Property Pages dialog box (see Figure 9.19).

Under Options, click the value shown for Deployment Mode. The choices—Deploy All and Deploy Changes Only—instruct BI Dev Studio to compare the state of the project and the state of the live database residing on the Analysis Server and either (1) deploy all the objects in the project or (2) deploy only the changes that were made.

Under Options, click the value for Processing Option. Then, click the arrow to see the drop-down list: Default, Do Not Process, and Full. If you do not want your database to be processed right after it has been created or modified, select Do Not Process.

Transactional deployment specifies whether commands sent in the deployment script should be treated as a single transaction.

The Server and Database properties (under Target) specify which server and which database to connect to.

Deploying a Project

When you have all your settings specified, you are ready to deploy your project. Right-click the database name in the Solution Explorer of BI Dev Studio. From the resulting menu, select Deploy. From here, BI Dev Studio takes over.

First, BI Dev Studio builds the solution, verifying that all the objects and their relationships are defined correctly. If BI Dev Studio detects any errors, those errors and their descriptions appear in the lower part of the screen in the error pane.

Once you have a successful build, BI Dev Studio creates a deployment script and sends it to the Analysis Server. By default, the script contains a Create statement and a processing command instructing Analysis Server to create the database on the server and process it.

Browsing a Cube

After your project has been deployed and your cube has been processed, you are ready to browse your cubes. You can use the Browser tab of the Cube Designer to browse the cube you have created or editing.

Figure 9.20 shows the Warehouse and Sales cube on the Browser tab.

You can see the cube measures, hierarchies, and levels in the navigation pane. From there, you drag and drop them onto the Office Web Components (OWC) control embedded in the Results pane. In the OWC, you can arrange the fields in any way you want to browse the results of the pane.

Above the OWC is an area where you can define filter conditions:

The icons in the toolbox enable you to, for example, process your cube, change the user currently browsing the cube to test security roles, and reestablish a connection if it is lost for one reason or another.