Tips for SSAS Project Deployment

Everybody complains about the error message they get when deploying their SQL Server Analytics Services (SSAS) solution/project! The SSAS just become so dedicated that tons of errors (big or small) could pop up and stop a solution/project from being deployed. After working on it for a while, I got two tips for you.

Always Start Small

When building a dimension, you could add only the key attribute and parent attribute first. Then, you can deploy the project to test whether the dimension added is working.

Later, if you feel you need other attributes, you can always add them again. For example, the attribute Currency Key has been added to the Dim Organization.

Having a dimension with many attributes, especially attributes that do not make sense to slice and dice upon, would create a headache. For example, in the below Dim Customer dimension, Birth Data and Phone number (yellow highlighted) are the ones that usually make no sense to analyze on. Also, there could be "duplicated" dimensions (red highlighted).

Delete and Rebuild is the Best Trouble Shooting

Most of the time, the SSAS error message is quite subtle. You might not be able to understand what it means. If you search the error message online, very likely you could not get a reliable answer. If you follow the suggestion online to troubleshoot, you could get even more errors.

For example, I got the below error message indicating a ByAccount issue. Do you understand what it means? I did not. After spending hours and hours troubleshooting based on the error message, I decided to delete the cube and rebuild it again by adding the same measure groups. Then the problem got magically solved!

The error actually says that the aggregation needs at least one dimension with property type of Accounts rather than Regular. Also, the dimension needs at least one attribute having the property type of Account. But at the time, I just did not get it. I also did not find an answer to this issue online. Delete and rebuild does not sound smart, but it does the job.

So, how will you create your SSAS project? If you are interested in SSAS and OLAP cube, there is a video showing how to build a simple SSAS project and then export it as an OLAP cube.