Configuring an SSAS 2008 Project
There are several important options to consider when creating a new SSAS project. Many Visual Studio veterans will be familiar with some of these properties, but there are some important new ones. This article will review each of the properties available under the project properties window so we can all understand more about how these options impact our projects and their behavior during development, build, and debugging.
This is a typical developer's property screen.
The first tab is Build, which is where you set options related to building the project into a cube that can be deployed to a SSAS instance in production.
Developer Server Edition: This specifies the version of the server that the project will be deployed to. This is important so developers will know which features are available to them based on their final destination for the solution.
Deployment Server Edition: Configured version for final deployment, since different versions have different compatibility configuration that need to be addressed.
Output Path: This stores the relative path for outputting build files. This file is then deployed to the server configured on the third tab based on your selections in SSAS Designer.
Remove Passwords: This determines if the password information will be stripped from the file so that it will need to be resupplied in production when the cube is processed. This may be a requirement depending on your companies' security policies.
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The next tab is Debugging, where you will configure options related to stepping through and debugging the cube in Visual Studio.
Start Object: Sets the object you wish to be the starting object in SSAS where the debugger will start. This option does not do much for you since we have to allow SSAS to perform certain operations first no matter what.
The next tab is Deployment. This is where you will do most of your work as an SSAS Developer.
Some important options to note on this screen include:
Deployment Processing Option:
Transactional Deployment: This will incorporate deployment and processing into a single transaction. Normally they are decoupled, allowing deployment changes to persist even through processing may fail. Depending on the type of change you are making, you may wish to make sure the processing will succeed before the changes persist.
Deployment Mode: The default setting (aptly named Default) means that only project changes will be deployed. You can also deploy all objects every time. For ease of development and performance you will generally choose "Deploy Changes".
Server: This specifies the server name or IP of the server the projects will be deployed to
Database: This will be the name of the database the project is deployed into.
You can use the configuration manager option to set different combinations of options for different configurations based on your projects. These settings are all on a per configuration basis.
As always, please post your questions in the BIDN forums to have access to the top resources on Business Intelligence and best practices!
Thanks - Adam