After almost 5 months hard work, I can say now I migrated our BI product successfully based on SQL Server 2005 platform,  although I made some assumptions and limitations during the implementation. Today, I plan to freeze our source code and release our product next week including documentation. However, I can not be relaxed because next realse has been waiting for me for a long time. Cheers!

    During migrating a small BI product, I found three problems related with properties, and MS already recognized them. It seems that all of them are related to a bigger issue which may raise its priority in MS’ calendar.

    DISPLAY_INFO, IS_DATAMEMBER Dimension Property

    UPDATEABLE Cell Property

    They are useful when you implement a BI product based on MSAS 2005, details about the properties, please reference by Microsoft MSDN website.

    I think that sharing the issue could help someone else until MS build a fix or service pack.

  When you build a MSAS project in BIDS, you want to test it. Normally MDX statement can met with the requirements, but maybe you can use XMLA command directly. Let me make a simple example. I create a project, and make one dimension write enable and add some calculated measures. I ever used XMLA command to test, even thought I can test by MDX statement. Below is some test scripts.

<Insert xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine">
  <Object>
    <Database xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">TestComment</Database>
    <Cube>Test2 Cube</Cube>
    <Dimension>Comment</Dimension>
  </Object>
  <Attributes>
    <Attribute>
      <AttributeName>Comment</AttributeName>
      <Keys>
        <Key>1000#;2005;5</Key>
      </Keys>
      <Value>Super Super Test</Value>
    </Attribute>
  </Attributes>
</Insert>

<Update xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine">
  <Object>
    <Database xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">TestComment</Database>
    <Cube>Test2 Cube</Cube>
    <Dimension>Comment</Dimension>
  </Object>
  <Attributes>
    <Attribute>
      <AttributeName>Comment</AttributeName>
      <Value>Update XMLA Command</Value>
    </Attribute>
  </Attributes>
  <Where>
      <Attribute>
        <AttributeName>Comment</AttributeName>
        <Keys>
          <Key>1000#;2005;5</Key>
        </Keys>
      </Attribute>
  </Where>
</Update>

 

    Yersterday afternoon, I routinely took up 572 bus after work. But I had to stay in the bus for 30 minutes more than often, because a pretty woman was stolen of pocket. It took 30 minutes in the world for 110 police car to arrive at the site. So tedious one day.

      Since MSAS 2005 makes big changes on dimension modeling, security and etc, how to migrate BI product on MSAS 2005 in short term deems to be a tough task. Let’s make a small web-based BI product which uses VB, ASP and ASPX files as an example.

     Firstly, it is better that you try to use Migration Wizard to migrate your product, if migration can be done automatically, why don’t we use it? Microsoft suggests using Upgrade Advisor which provides more suggestive advice on how to fix the error occurred if you migrated. More detail about Migration and Upgrade Advisor, please reference by the Online Documentation. Please note private dimension and virtual cube will put you in trouble.

     If automatic migration can not work, we have to add more manual tasks. Because DSO should be deprecated, we should discard all codes related to DSO API. There are two solutions we can use. One is rewrite everything in server side, the other is extract DSO functions from the server side to implement by AMO. Obviously, it is not feasible for most projects in short term if we apply for the first solution.

    However DSO is COM wrapped and AMO is .NET based, if we implement all functions previously done by DSO, how can VB and ASP file use them. It is lucky that Microsoft provides interoperate way between COM and .NET assembly, which is CCW (COM Callable Wrapper).

    Of course you will meet with many issues when you plan to implement the wrapper. I give some important issues here, and hope you consider when you start your migration project.

    Writeback table’s column binding

    Private dimension & Role playing dimension

    Cell’s Comment support

    Virtual Cube & Multi-Measure Group

    Hierarchy

    Non-leaf member’s datamember

    [IS_DATAMEMBER] and [DISPLAY_INFO] dimension properties in Parent-Child Dimension

    Upgrade program & Metadata

   

    I just got a copy of Applied Microsoft Analysis Services from Amozon.com, by Teo Lachev before New Year. To be honest, I didn’t really want this book when I was asked to book some books about MSAS 2005.

    At first glance, the book has more than 650 pages, I can not imagine before. After I reviewed the preface, it made me more disappointed because it gave me an impression that it seems to target on refresher of MSAS 2005. I have been migrating our BI product from MSAS 2000 to MSAS 2005 for four month, so I thought it maybe not useful for me to solve some issues I now met in the migration project. Thanks to our Great Chinese New Year, I picked up the book and started to read occasionally in one day in the festival. I am impressed by both the words of the author and details and depth of MSAS 2005. UDM, as a completely dimension model runs through the whole book. It also covers the fundamental concepts of MSAS 2005. Although I am still stuck on the issues in my project, I am getting more clear view of the new Analysis Service.

    I strongly recommend people who do or plan to do tasks about MSAS 2005 to read the book. It is indeed an impressive work. OK for now, I will try to speak out my reviews in my next series.