I've been meaning to post this for a little while, and a recent post on the SSAS forum at ssas-info.com prompted me to finally get around to it. Basically the small Powershell script below will attach to the specified SSAS server and script all of the databases out to an XMLA file. In this example I also add a timestamp in the form of YYYYMMDD to ...

There was a thread last year on the SSAS MSDN forum SSAS 2008 -- Why is metadata so slow??? in relation to slow metadata queries on a cube with 250+ measure groups. The good news is that despite the fact that the SSAS team has largely been focussed on PowerPivot for the SQL Server 2008 R2 release, they have also tried to address a few of the ...

I've seen this question come up a couple of times. What is usually being asked is ''can we make the subtotals additive for a distinct count measure?'' – and the short answer is a resounding No! But the short answer does not really make for a compelling blog post, so let's dig a little deeper into this issue. The more complete answer is that while ...

I had an issue recently with my SSAS 2008 performance counters - they were all showing up as 0. I could see them listed in Performance Monitor, but none of them worked. The counters for my SSAS 2005 instance worked fine, but the 2008 ones did not. I had observed this behaviour on my old Vista x86 machine and now it was happening on a fresh ...

If you are using SQL Server 2005 or 2008 Analysis Services, and have been keeping up to date with hotfixes cumulative updates, you may have been adversely affected by a previous round (and your users might not have even noticed). Essentially you can get...(read more)

I did a presentation earlier this month on PowerPivot (a.k.a Project Gemini) at the MOSSIG meeting and as promised here is the slide deck. If you've seen other ''Gemini'' presentations there will be nothing new in this presentation, I've really only posted it here so that those who attended the meeting can refer to it. You can download the ...

There was a question the other day on the MSDN SSAS forum asking how to find out the Edition of SSAS which is running on a given server. The answer to this question could be either Standard, Enterprise or Developer. The Object Explorer in Management Studio displays the current version next to the server name, but not the Edition. Now at a basic ...

I just finished my talk at the 2009 SQL Downunder Code Camp on Analysis Services data. As promised, attached below are the scripts and Powerpoint slides that I used in the presentation. There is not that much information in the slides, they were really just introduction and conclusion - all of the content is in the scripts. And the scripts ...

Full Disclosure: I was lucky enough to be sent a free review copy by the publisher But... if I had not been sent a review copy I would have gone out and bought a copy of this book anyway. Why is that? Because I had purchased the previous edition and I knew that it would be the most in depth book on SSAS 2008 available. It has been written by ...

Gemini is the code name for the new breakthrough Self-Service Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities being delivered in the SQL Server 2008 R2 release. Gemini enables end users to build BI applications by integrating data from a variety of sources, modeling, refining and analyzing the data, adding business logic, building reports and ...