I just faced the problem to connect an Analysis Services (2000 or 2005) to a SQL Server 2005 database using a OPENROWSET statement. If you face an "access denied" error (precisely, "The OLE DB provider "MSOLAP" for linked server "SERVERNAME" reported  Read more

I just answered to a newsgroup question about the use of views as fact tables to populate cubes. I am a strong supporter of the need to build a star schema before to build a UDM, while I understand that in some circumstances (few data, fast prototypes)  Read more

After a month of editing, I finally released my paper titled "The many-to-many revolution". I copied in this post the introduction of the 84-page paper that is published (for free!) on a dedicated dimensional modeling page of SQLBI.EU web site. I would  Read more

I started to evaluate the use of linked dimension across different database on the same server. I encountered the first issue after a few minutes: when you link a dimension, VS editor create a dimension file that copies the structure of the dimension,  Read more

I love VISIO to make database modeling, it gives very nice and colorful diagrams that I use for the documentation. I hate VISIO as it is really far from perfect, among all the others one thing it lacks is the ability to generate a database using SCHEMA  Read more

Alberto Ferrari wrote a nice post with a workaround to generate tables in different SQL Server 2005 schemas starting from a single Visio document. The trick includes a SQL script to do the magic. I hope that next Visio version would be able to do that  Read more

I'm approaching the review phase for a paper I wrote about advanced dimensional modeling with Analysis Services 2005 using many-to-many dimension relationships. Currently the paper has around 80 page (with many figures!) and covers 2 base techniques (base  Read more

Yesterday I had to fix a simple still subtle bug in TableDifference , I think sharing the experience will be useful for everybody involved in custom component creation. The component has some fields that are initialized in the component constructor, at  Read more

I just opened the wiki on SQLBI.EU : it contains link to useful resources for BI solution development with SQL Server, so it covers SSIS, SSAS, SSRS and of course SQL Server itself. The wiki works well when there is large contribution, so please share  Read more

I just answered to a request on SQLBI.EU forum of someone that is looking for a better lookup component, specifically designed for typical Data Warehouse scenarios. While you can read the whole thread on the forum , I try to resume most wanted requirements,  Read more