Documenting Analysis Services Cubes with Reporting Services

Documenting cubes in Microsoft Analysis Services 2008 has never been an easy task, and there are a number of commercial software out there that help you with this task. However, you can create an efficient documentation using Microsoft Reporting Services.

The way to do this is to fill in the description fields of measures, dimensions, hierarchies and levels within the Analysis Services project, then use the DMV query language in Reporting Services to query the metadata of the cubes (this is very simple!). Below I describe some pros and cons of this approach, and then proceed to the steps on how to implement this.

Advantages

• Once you create the layout of the report, you do not need to update it anymore. The report automatically gets a list of measures and dimensions in the cube, so any changes such as new, changed and removed measures or dimensions are immediately reflected.
• You can use some basic HTML tags such as <b> for bold, <ul> and <li> for lists and <a> for links.
• Customizeable layout on the Reporting Services side.

Limitations

• The description field is a plain text box. It becomes uncomfortable with lengthy descriptions, and it is not possible to include images, videos or other multimedia content directly.

How To

1. Open the Analysis Services project from within Visual Studio and open the cube structure.
2. Fill in the description fields of Measures, Dimensions, Hierarchies and Levels. There are several places where you can fill in the description. The following can help you:
• Measures: Click on any measure and then fill in the Description field from the Properties box (if you do not see the Properties, right click and choose Properties).
  

  

  Figure 1 - Measures description

• Dimensions: Similarly, click on the top-level dimension to add their descriptions.
  

  

  Figure 2 - Dimensions description

• Hierarchies, Levels & Dimension Attributes: Open each dimension (.dim) to edit the descriptions of dimension attributes, hierarchies and levels.
  

  

  Figure 3 - Hierarchies, levels and dimension attributes description

• Calculated Measures: For calculated measures, it's a little different. From the cube structure, go to the Calculations tab and hit the Properties button on the toolbar at the top. The description field can be found in this window.
  

  

  Figure 4 - Calculates measures description

3. Once you filled in the description fields and deployed the cube, open the Report Designer from within the Business Intelligence Studio (Note: The following steps can only be made using Report Designer, and not Report Builder 3.0).
4. Create a new Data Source to your Analysis Services.
   

   

   Figure 5 - Creating a data source

5. Create a new Data Set based on that data source and open the Query Designer. Locate a pick axe icon on the toolbar and click the button to switch to DMX Designer. Then click on the right-most icon to switch from Design Mode to text mode as the screenshots below.
   

   

   Figure 6 - Switch to DMX

   
   

   

   Figure 7 - Switch from Design Mode to Text

6. Here you can enter some DMV queries to retrieve measures and dimensions metadata from a cube. For instance, to get all the measures and their metadata, use the following query (replacing 'Adventure Works' with the name of your cube)
   SELECT * FROM $System.MDSCHEMA_MEASURES WHERE CUBE_NAME = 'Adventure Works'
   This gives you information such as measure caption, unique name, description and group name which you can use to display the documentation.
7. You need to create new data sets, one for dimensions, one for hierarchies and one for levels. Use the following queries for each:
• Dimensions: SELECT * FROM $System.MDSCHEMA_DIMENSIONS where CUBE_NAME = 'Adventure Works'
• Hierarchies: SELECT * FROM $System.MDSCHEMA_HIERARCHIES where CUBE_NAME = 'Adventure Works'
• Levels: SELECT * FROM $System.MDSCHEMA_LEVELS where CUBE_NAME = 'Adventure Works'
8. You can then freely build the report and use this data to display the documentation however you want. I built a sample report that you can see in the screenshot below (I only changed a few descriptions for the sample).
   

   

   Figure 8 - Sample report with a few descriptions

   
   

Additional Notes

There are additional fields that you can make use of, one of which is visibility. Some measures or dimensions may be hidden in the cube. Each data set contains a property to check whether the field is visible or not.

You can also query for cubes, perspectives and other elements of an Analysis Services project. There are some resources available online about DMV queries; look up for cube metadata using DMV queries.

In Report Builder 3.0, for technical reasons, you cannot use DMv queries, therefore you must use the Visual Studio Report Designer.

Tags: documentation cubes analysis services reporting services dmx dmv query metadata measures dimensions description field as2008

SSRS: Retrieving Member Properties in Reporting Services (with Analysis Services)

In Reporting Services, it is unclear how, or if it is even possible to retrieve member properties when using an analysis services data source.

Member properties refer to the extra information attributed to members apart from their names. For instance, in the AdventureWorksDW, the Customer dimension contains several member properties including Address, Gender and Phone.

Screenshot 1 - Member Properties

Dragging these properties into the query window in Reporting Services unfortunately does not do the job. From what I've seen so far, it also does not seem possible from the query designer in design mode. However you can make a small change to the MDX code in order to retrieve these properties.

Change the design mode to see the MDX . Within the code, one line reads "DIMENSION PROPERTIES MEMBER_CAPTION, MEMBER_UNIQUE_NAME" as in the screenshot below.

Screenshot 2 - MDX Code to look for

Following that, add a comma and insert the syntax for the member property that you wish to retrieve. For instance, if I want to retrieve the Customer's Address, I would add [Customer].[Customer].[Address].

Screenshot 3 - Addition to the MDX Code

If you are in doubt about the syntax, look for the property in the left panel and hover your mouse over it. A tooltip will show you the syntax, but you need to modify it slightly.

Screenshot 4 - Tooltip showing Member Property Syntax

Remove the "Properties" and parenthesis, and replace the double quotes with square brackets. So [Customer].[Customer].Properties( "Address" ) would become [Customer].[Customer].[Address]

After successfully doing this and executing the query to test the result, you can freely use the property as you use any other field in the report (Fields!Address.Value).

Screenshot 5 - Result with Customer Address

Few Notes:

• After doing this, you will be unable to use the graphical designer to edit the query as that will undo any changes you made to the MDX code. This could compromise the maintainability of the report especially if you are unfamiliar with MDX.
• An alternative is to have some design changes to the cubes, such that all member properties are separate members themselves. This allows you to easily drag the fields into the query and it's not a bad cube design approach in itself.

Tags: reporting services analysis services mdx member properties dimension properties

MDX: Replacing Null / Empty Values

In the result of an MDX query, you may get some empty or null values which you'd want to treat differently, such as considering them as 0s. For instance in Reporting Services, you might want to filter out any rows with 0 or empty values.

In such cases, you can use the MDX function CoalesceEmpty, which replaces an empty cell value with a given value. For instance:

WITH MEMBER [Measures].[NonEmpty Discount] AS
     COALESCEEMPTY( [Measures].[Discount Amount], 0 )

will replace any empty values of discount amount with zero.

Very useful in certain scenarious.

MSDN Documentation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms146080.aspx
Tags: mdx replace replacing get getting null empty values measure zeros

SSRS: Hierarchies issue in report parameters with Analysis Services

Reporting Services offers great support for Analysis Services (getting data from cubes). Admittedly however, you will sooner or later meet with several little annoyances that hinder report development, especially if you are not confident or have no knowledge in MDX.

One common issue occurs when setting a dimension hierarchy as a parameter, as in screenshot 1 (for this example, I will be using Customer Geography hierarchy in the AdventureWorks Cube).

Screenshot 1 - Parameter

Reporting Services automatically creates a new hidden dataset, that retrieves the dimension members and all the members of its levels to use as available values for the report parameter. For instance, if you want the countries as parameter, you also get cities and names along with it, which could make the dropdown list parameter huge and messy, as in screenshot 2. While sometimes this is desired, other times it is not.

Screenshot 2 - Large dropdown list

So what can you do if you want only the countries? One option, of course, is to have each level as a separate hierarchy defined in the cube, as seen in the AdventureWorksDW. This is not always possible however. The steps below show you how to do this in the report, and can be applied for any case.

Solution 1 (if you only need the top level in the hierarchy):

• In the Report Data, right click the Datasets folder and select "Show Hidden Datasets".

Screenshot 3 - Show Hidden Datasets

• Right click the new dataset that appeared, and select "Query...". You'll be shown some scary, unformatted code (called MDX). Don't fret!

Screenshot 4 - MDX with ALLMEMBERS

• In the code, there is one and only one place with the text "ALLMEMBERS", as seen in screenshot 4. This can be safely replaced with "CHILDREN" as in screenshot 5. If you execute the query, you will see that you only get the members without all the lower levels.

Screenshot 5 - MDX with CHILDREN

• Click OK to save the query and preview the report. The dropdown list only shows the countries now, and is much cleaner than before.

Screenshot 6 - Clean dropdown list

Solution 2 (to get a specific level in the hierarchy):

• The first solution works only if you require the members at the highest level (in the example, countries). But what if we want cities only for example? The first thing is to repeat the steps as above until screenshot 4.
• This time, we will leave ALLMEMBERS as it is, and instead replace the statement preceding it. In this case, it is [Customer].[Customer Geography]. In the left column under the Metadata tab, find the level that you require and hover the mouse over it to get the statement you need, as in screenshot 7.

Screenshot 7 - Getting level MDX statement

• We replace the statement in the MDX code as shown in the screenshot above. Finally we get the desired level members.

Screenshot 8 - Dropdown list with cities

Tags: reporting services analysis services mdx report parameters hierarchies level issue problem messy large dropdown list