Multidimensional Models and Business Intelligence Development Studio - Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services - page 109

FIGURE 9.2 You can view the DDL definition of an object in BI Dev Studio.

your object (let's say it is a dimension object) in the Dimension Designer, you will see the
modifications you made earlier in the XML editor.

Often, an easier approach is to use the XML editor rather than the BI Dev Studio user
interface. For example, you cannot change the ID of a dimension in the dimension editor.
It is possible that the dimension could be used in more than one cube. In that case,
changing the ID of the dimension requires going through all the cubes in the database to
determine which cubes the dimension is used in, and then changing the ID of the dimen-
sion in all those. But, the DDL definition of the entire database, including all the objects,
is a much better vehicle for this sort of change. You can simply do a search and replace
and change the dimension ID wherever it occurs.

In our sample FoodMart 2008 data source, shown in Figure 9.2, you can easily modify the
name of the server that your data source points to. All you do is change the content of the
<ConnectionString> element.

Any time you are having a hard time finding a property of some object among all the
other properties, you can switch to the DDL definition of the object. Then, you can easily
search for the property and modify it directly in the DDL definition.

Throughout this topic, we give you lots of examples of DDL definitions. Now with the
View Code option, you can look directly at the DDL definition of one of your own objects
in the XML editor, and you can make the changes you want.