The attribute key was converted to an unknown member

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The attribute key was converted to an unknown member

arielihh

SSC Veteran

Points: 210
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September 14, 2016 at 11:50 am

#400724

hi fellows, hope someone would have an answer for my issue, i would really appreciate it.
So, i have a cube i'm trying to get running. but this error is stopping from being process successfully.
Errors in the OLAP storage engine: The attribute key cannot be found when processing: Table: 'dbo_FactSomeFact', Column: 'DimSomeDimWkey', Value: '62'. The attribute is 'Some Dim Wkey'. Errors in the OLAP storage engine: The attribute key was converted to an unknown member because the attribute key was not found. Attribute Some Dim Wkey of Dimension: GL Catalog from Database: MultidimensionalXY, Cube: SomeCube, Measure Group: Fact Some Fact, Partition: Fact Some Fact, Record: 1.
some facts and things i already check:
- i already process full the dimension "GL Catalog".
- the table dimension has no null or unexisting value in the fact, in the facts all dimension member exists in the dimension table.
- i deleted and re created the cube several times.
some context:
- my dimension in (SSAS) is created from 1 primary tables and 6 related tables through foreign key.
- in the primary dimension table "DimSomeDim" all foreign keys members exists in the other 6 related tables.
- the other 6 related tables has foreign keys to other tables which those are null for some members.

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Martin Schoombee SSCoach Points: 19135 More actions · Answer 1

You will need to check your keys, relationships and dimension again. As the error states, it cannot find the dimension member with a surrogate key of "62" in the dimension.

Browse the dimension in Excel or Management studio and ensure that you see the dimension member with that surrogate key value. Also verify your connections...it could be that your connection is pointing to a different environment for some reason.

arielihh SSC Veteran Points: 210 More actions · Answer 2

Actually the issue is a different story.

It turns out that my secondary tables had multiple columns with FK constrains, some of then they were null values, from the business perspective there is no issue with that. the error SSAS was throwing had not a clue of what was the real issue, since the value "62" it does exist in every dimension, but in a lower level a secondary dimension with a FK which i was not using at that time had null values.

my conclusion is that SSAS is not able to process dimension tables with nullable FK columns. the error is thrown at the cube processing step, the dimension processed successfully every time, i guess it is a flaw in the way SSAS build the query for the cube.

does anyone knows if there is a configuration somewhere to set is processing behavior differently?

Martin Schoombee SSCoach Points: 19135 More actions · Answer 3

This is not an SSAS bug/error. By design, SSAS requires non-null key references between fact and dimensions...and between dimension tables if multiple tables are used (in a snowflake design). There are some processing options to ignore the null members, but best practice is usually to have default records in each dimension table as to avoid null references.