If you have done a lot of work with SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) you may have seen this message:

We’ve all been there. A build error. I tend to get this because I like to forget commas when modifying calculations in the MDX section of the cube editor. It’s a fun little game I like to play to keep myself on my toes…question mark?? Anyway, what follows this message box is usually something that you can go fix, like adding the comma or semicolon back into the calculate script. Sometimes, however, you may see the much less friendly:

Internal error: Invalid enumeration value. Please call customer support! is not a valid value for this element.

If you’re like me, the first thing you thought was “Well that can’t be good.” The second thing I thought was “Well of course that’s not valid, there is no customer support number listed.” But seriously, if you have attended a Pragmatic Works SSAS workshop or a BI Bootcamp with any number of our trainers chances are you have seen this error pop up. Just about the only time I ever get this message is when I am teaching a class and processing the cube over and over and over.

Occasionally I will get this in development, again when doing small cube changes on my laptop and processing the cube a lot. I have never seen this in a production environment, which is not at all to say it hasn’t or won’t happen.But for peace of mind before people start freaking out this is not a super common error message to see and even less frequent in production from my experience.

Solution:

Now for the slightly unfortunate part: The Solution. The only way I personally know how to fix this issue is to go to the SSAS server in management studio, delete the SSAS database and redeploy the solution. The unfortunate part is the cube has to be reprocessed along with all the dimensions which could take a long time if you were just making a small calculation change and ended up with this error. The good news is that all your data SHOULD be available in the source system, and you will definitely have all the cube structure still in your solution inside BIDS (or Data Tools)

Note: While the tabular model has not been out nearly as long as multidimensional (and I have not done extensive development in tabular), to date I have only seen this error in the multidimensional format of SSAS.

Have you seen this error before? Did you have a way to fix this without deleting and redeploying? Have you gotten this same error message while working with tabular?