Creating Analysis Services Cubes - SQL Server Analysis Services 2012 Cube Development - page 83

Browsing the cube data
Now that you have created, deployed, and processed a cube, you're ready (and prob-
ably anxious) to review the result. You can browse cube data using SSDT, an SSMS
cube browser, or a client tool of your choice. Prior versions of SSMS and SSDT
(formerly known as Business Intelligence Development Studio or BIDS) used Office
Web Components (OWC), which is a deprecated technology and is no longer avail-
able with Analysis Services 2012. Although OWC had its share of issues, with the
SSMS 2008R2 (and earlier) cube browser, we could navigate through user hierarch-
ies one level at a time. Unfortunately SSMS and SSDT 2012 no longer offer this func-
tionality, which is very limiting, as you will see shortly. With SSMS 2012, Microsoft
included a shortcut to launch Excel, which provides a much richer user interface for
browsing cube data. Of course, this design presumes that each developer would have
Microsoft Office (or at least Excel version 2007 or later) installed on the same ma-
chine where you have SSMS, which may or may not be true. Hopefully, the following
release of SQL Server will include a better cube browser. The good news is that if you
still have SSMS 2008R2, you can use it to browse SSAS 2012 cubes.
How to do it...
To browse a cube perform the following steps:
1. Connect to the Analysis Services instance where you deployed and processed
your solution.
2. Navigate to the database you created, expand the Cubes folder, right-click
on the cube, and select Browse . Within SSDT you can simply click on the
Browser tab of the cube editor.
3. You see that measures are listed under the Fact Reseller Sales measure
group and some of them are organized further into COST and PRICE folders.
Expand the COST folder and drag the Total Product Cost measure into
the grid area. Alternatively, you can right-click on the measure and select Add
to Query . Do the same with the Unit Price measure found in the PRICE
folder.
4. Next expand the Due Date dimension and add the Due Date.Calendar
hierarchy to the query.
5. Notice that SSMS/SSDT browsers immediately flatten out the hierarchy and
list every single member found in the hierarchy. This might not cause a huge