"Right-Click Total Expense," My Butt!
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I'm finally (!) learning Analysis Services, mainly at my boss' instigation. So I installed it (vs. 8.0.760) and then figured, what better way than to start with the Tutorial? Turns out that's a lot like saying, what better way to save money on shoes than to chop off your feet at the ankles?
And as it happens, not only will the Tutorial give you practical and conceptual knowledge of Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Tools, but it will give you practical experience at debugging all the things that ought to work right out of the box, but don't.
Very quickly, I learned that as soon as I install Analysis Services, I need as well to rush it up to SP3. Otherwise, some things won't work. I also learned that it was time to upgrade both my server and my workstation to MDAC 2.8, or else I couldn't process any of the data cubes or shared dimensions. I hope there are others like myself who really enjoy the feature of Windows that allows -- no, insists -- installation disks be allowed to write over your current settings of MDAC. And even that wouldn't be any fun if it were an easy matter to determine which version of MDAC you happen to be running. What would be the real beauty of having a universal data access tool that everyone depends on, if you could know with certainty which version you're running? That's no fun. Better to stub your toe in the darkness than to light a candle and curse the ugly decor.
But enough about subtle challenges to one's sanity. What about blatant challenges?
Section 3 in the Tutorial is titled, "Advanced Analysis", and its first section is called "Set Dimension Custom Rollups, Write Back, and More." Turns out, they meant to say "...and Less", because the "Write Back" option, for some reason, isn't available on my version. Don't know why. Pressing on, I encountered this neat little phrase:
"You can use shortcut menu options to change the structure of the hierarchy (indent, move up and down, and so on) and also to add a new sibling or child to a member. Right-click Total Expense, click New Member, and then click Child."
They could have added, "Or not." At the time this phrase appears, I'm in the Dimension Editor, having selected the data tab, and having expanded "All Account" -> "Net Income", and having highlighted the "Total Expense" member. Problem is, despite the cheery encouragement provided by the Tutorial, I cannot right-click Total Expense. Or rather, I can right-click it all day long, but no options present themselves to me. I can't see "New Member" on any list at all, let alone "Old Member", "Gold Member", or "DisMember".
Why do I sometimes get the impression that software is a practical joke and everyone is laughing but me?
I have a therapist to help me deal with the frustration issues, thanks a lot. I also have a pastor to help me come to terms with my spiritual shortcomings, thanks again for being concerned. But if anyone knows what my (technical) problem is, I'd be most thankful for any willingness to share.
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Hey Lee,
The s/w's not just laughing at you, it laughs at me also and is sometimes just plain out mean
To get your (parent-child) dimension working as per the tutorial, go to the Properties of the dimension (in dimension editor), make sure that 'Write Enabled' is set to True. Now, unless you swap to the 'Data View', you'll not see the hint telling you that write-back won't work until the dimension is 'included unmodified in a processed cube'. Because it's already in the Budget cube, all you need to do is say 'thanks for the hint', and process the dimension (you can do this from within the editor). Say 'yes' to incrementally updating the dimension. Ok, now, staying in data view, you should now be able to RC on a member (say Total Expense) and Add a sibling or child, set the unary operator etc etc.
So now you've gotten the 'New Member', 'Gold Member' can be found in the 'old school comedy' section, 'Dismember' is currently out but should be back in a week.
Cheers big ears!
Steve.
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Hi Lee,
Here is a vb script that I got from this site to verify your version of mdac. I have used it often and it works great! Just paste the script in any text editor and name it with a .vbs extention. Launch the .vbs file on the machine and it returns a message box stating the mdac version installed.
dim oConn
set oConn=CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
msgbox "Mdac Version = " & oConn.version
set oConn = nothing
Hang in there, you are definitely not alone!
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Thanks for the response, Steve!
> Steve: "To get your (parent-child) dimension working as per the tutorial, go to the Properties of the dimension (in dimension editor), make sure that 'Write Enabled' is set to True."
That's just it: I never got that option presented to me in the Wizard, and it doesn't appear in the 'Properties' box.
I did a Google on this issue last night and discovered there are some features that are available in the Enterprise Edition that aren't on the Standard Edition. If this is one of them, perhaps that explains my situation. There are a couple of pages on the Tutorial that say, "If you are using Standard Edition, click to the next section." The Tutorial was mum about this on the page where I didn't see the "New Member", but that doesn't mean it doesn't apply, I suppose.
When software is broken, there are two things you can do: 1. Fix the software; or 2. Fix the documentation.
I think it's a sign of general cheesiness on Microsoft's part that I need to upgrade to the Enterprise Edition to have at my disposal all the Analysis features. One of the reasons, perhaps, that Linux ought to be marketed as a patch for Windows.
I'll keep researching this. Thanks again, Steve.
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Thanks for the response, t.! Also for the VB script. I downloaded something from Microsoft called 'Component Checker', and if it can be trusted, I now have things under control. (Your script and 'Component Checker' are in agreement that I'm now running MDAC 2.8.)
Component Checker's accompanying documentation states:
> "The program attempts to determine the version of MDAC on your computer based on versions of the core MDAC files it finds. If a given snapshot has more version matches than any other version, the program notifies the user with a "closest version detection" message. Component Checker uses this version information to complete its analysis."
The casual reader can miss what Microsoft is really saying here, which is: "Even Microsoft cannot tell you precisely which version of MDAC you're running. We sure hope a 'best guess' is good enough for your purposes."
"Computer science", my eye. We do our best to dress up our profession with images of studious, learned scholars with white jackets and stethoscopes -- all the better for picking up a nice paycheck -- but when you get right down to it, we're just in coveralls, slinging drywall paste and spackle.
Thanks again for the response, t.!
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Hey Lee,
Component Checker can only provide a best guess as MDAC is a set of components, hence it checks the versions (of the components) you have and then says well the MDAC that shipped with (most/all?) of these versioned dll's is xx.xx. Because, as you stated earlier, installers can write over drivers and components, the best it can do is make an educated guess.
You're right also on the Enterprise Vs Standard edition, if you're running standard, the Writeback option for dimensions won't be there. Check BOL for the complete listing of Version differences.
As far as patching your wintel machine to linux, i can only suggest doing a quick whip-round to see which other vendor gives you a RDBMS, OLAP Server, Reporting Server, ETL Tool, Alerting Server and small-footprint RDBMS engine (for mobile devices) for the one licence cost.
If you are serious about going to linux tho, take a quick squiz at mondrian, it's an open source XMLA compliant OLAP engine. The creators site lives on sourceforge. Costs nothing, or didn't when I looked anyway.
Have fun!
Steve.
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