Oracle BI EE 11g – Connectivity to SQL

Server Analysis Services (MSAS) 2008

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 07:21

BI EE 11g now provides true multi-dimensional navigation/analysis support. This multi-

dimensional analysis is supported for almost all the data sources that are supported by BI Server
for reporting. Today we shall how BI EE 11g works on Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services
2008. There is no explicit MSAS 2008 support yet but from a perspective of BI EE nothing much
has changed. So lets see how this connectivity works in 11g.

Like BI EE 10g, 11g connects to MSAS through XMLA. So, the first step in enabling the
connectivity is to enable the XMLA access in MSAS. To enable the XMLA access, we need to
make the resource and dll files from the SQL Server installation to be accessible for IIS(IIS is
necessary for XMLA). We basically have to copy the files from C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL
Server\MSAS10.MSSQLSERVER\OLAP\bin\isapi directory to the IIS directory
C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\olap directory.

After copying the files, create a new

Application Pool from the Computer Management Console.
 From the Default Website create a
new Virtual Directory.
 Give the Virtual
Directory a name of OLAP. Also, make the Virtual Directory to point to the olap folder under
IIS.

Right click on the

new Virtual Directory and go to the Properties section. Make sure the Application Pool and
Application Name are pointing to the OLAP & olap respectively as shown below
 Also click on the
Configuration button to add the msmdpump.dll as a resource to be served through IIS.
 And in the Directory
Security tab, ensure that the following authentication is enabled. It might be different in your
case depending on how you have configured SQL Server.
 Click on Add a new
Web Service Extension to add a new web service pointing to msmdpump.dll

This should provide us access to

SSAS through XMLA. To test XMLA, just use the direct URL in a browser
http://localhost/olap/msmdpump.dll. This should produce an XML response as shown below.
 Now that we have
the connectivity working, lets open up the repository and choose the Import Metadata > XMLA
option. If you notice, there is no explicit support for SQL Server 2008 yet. Lets choose the
Analysis Services 2005 and enter the login credentials.

We would get a
provider mismatch as 2008 XMLA is different from 2005. Ignore the warning and click on OK.

This should list all

the MSAS cubes that the user has access to as shown below. Lets choose 3 of the them for the
import.
 One of the first
things that you will notice is, BI EE 10g did not support unbalanced SQL Server hierarchies (an
error from 10g while doing the import). But i guess in 11g this restriction has been removed as
we won’t be getting an error while importing unbalanced hierarchies.

Also, in 10g while importing a SQL

Server cube, every hierarchy got imported as a separate dimension as shown below
 But in 11g, individual hierarchies still get imported but
each hierarchy will reside in their own dimensions as shown below like Essbase
 Also, unlike Essbase where Measure dimensions are
imported into their own hierarchy (in 11g), Measures are imported as is from SSAS. The primary
reason for this is, SSAS requires explicitly qualifying measures like Oracle OLAP. Now to see
whether we can convert multiple hierarchy view into a single dimension view like Essbase, lets
right click on the Date dimension and click on convert to a single hierarchy view

This will produce an error. Looks like all the

new features that were introduced primarily for Essbase sources are not supported for MSAS. If
you look at the error message, it will have “Essbase” in the error message. So, i am guessing this
is supported only for Essbase & has not been implemented for SSAS.
 Lets now create
the BMM & Presentation layer and test out the Hierarchical columns.

Though it does work, in most

cases, i received an internal assertion error as shown below. On further testing, looks like
Hierarchical Columns do not handle No Results found properly for MSAS sources.

I am not sure
whether it is due to the hierarchical columns as normal attribute columns worked really well.

In a future blog post, i

shall be comparing the MDX generated for Essbase and MSAS by BI EE.