Generic Data Sources

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Generic Data Sources

Paris

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Points: 44
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February 9, 2006 at 10:07 am

#152752

Hi All,
I'm trying to get some info on generic data sources for MS-OLAP cubes.
I heard that by using generic data sources we dont need to change the data sources when we copy and paste cubes from development server to producton server,Is this true?
I greatly appreciate if anyone can give me any info on Generic Data Souces for MS-OLAP Cubes acessing data from MS SQL 2000.
Please Help!

Thanks,
Paris

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stevefromOZ SSC-Forever Points: 43646 More actions · Answer 1

Not quite sure what you mean by generic data source, but if you're refering to the naming of the DS, then yes, following the steps outlined in the Ops guide will mean you hve nicely named DS's in either environment.

E.g. You have a DB called Warehouse on a server called Server1 (where Server1 is your Dev and Server2 is your Prod). If you create the datasource, by default the name will be something like 'Server1 - Warehouse' (or the other way 'round). If you then moved the catalog to production, you're stuck with the datasource that contains a reference (only it's name, you can obviously change which server it actually points to) to the Dev environment. This can get very messy i.e. you end up with datasources that are named XXXX but when looking at the properties they refer to server YYYY.

To get around this, after creating the datasource but before starting on the dims or cube, copy and paste the DS, this will let you define your own name for it, e.g just 'Warehouse', this is now machine independent in that it doesn't refer to the server at all.

Steve.

Paris SSC Rookie Points: 44 More actions · Answer 2

Great ,Thank you Stevefromoz.

Thanks so much

Paris

Paris SSC Rookie Points: 44 More actions · Answer 3

I have 1 quick question Stevefromoz,

Like you said "To get around this, after creating the datasource but before starting on the dims or cube, copy and paste the DS, "

My question is- what if i already have a cube and i need to change the DS,how do I go abt it,as I arleady have cubes built in the catalog but now,I need to change the DS.

Also, does the change apply for all the cubes in that catalog?

Thanks again,

Paris

stevefromOZ SSC-Forever Points: 43646 More actions · Answer 4

Hi Paris,

Yeah, this is a not very nice piece of AS2K functionality. In general, no, you can't change the DS name. The options for doing this are:

1) try to hack the XML in the repository -> really, *don't* do this, you could end up corrupting the whole thing and have to restore from your backups

2) try using the DSO-XML convertor. This (unsuppoorted) tool reads the DB information (using DSO) and creates XML document/s that represent the meta data of your Cube/DB/dimension etc (depending on what you pick to script). You can then make changes to the XML document and using the convertor tool again, re-apply this changed document to the database. I spent a while trying to get this to work focusing only on getting my DS names changed, but with no success. A colleague recently told me he ha gotten it to work but I'll need to get his steps again - it wasn't obvious.

Other than 2) above, the only other real option is to rebuild

Cheers,

Steve.

Paris SSC Rookie Points: 44 More actions · Answer 5

That helps,

Thanks Stevefromoz,Thanks for your time

Paris