Deploying an Analysis Services Project

To view cube and dimension data for the objects in the Analysis Services Tutorial cube in the Analysis Services Tutorial project, you must deploy the project to a specified instance of Analysis Services and then process the cube and its dimensions. Deploying an Analysis Services project creates the defined objects in an instance of Analysis Services. Processing the objects in an instance of Analysis Services copies data from the underlying data sources into the cube objects. For more information, see Deploying Analysis Services Projects, Configuring Analysis Services Project Properties

At this point in the development process, you are deploying the cube to an instance of Analysis Services on a development server. When you have finished developing your business intelligence project, you will generally use the Analysis Services Deployment Wizard to deploy to a production server. For more information, see Planning an Analysis Services Deployment, Using the Analysis Services Deployment Wizard

In the following task, you review the deployment properties of the Analysis Services Tutorial project and then deploy the project to your local instance of Analysis Services.

To deploy the Analysis Services project

  1. In Solution Explorer, right-click the Analysis Services Tutorial project, and then click Properties.

    The Analysis Services Tutorial Property Pages dialog box appears and displays the properties of the Active(Development) configuration. You can define multiple configurations, each with different properties. For example, different developers may want to configure the same project to deploy to different development computers and with different deployment properties, such as different database names or processing properties. Notice the value for the Output Path property. This property specifies the location in which the XMLA deployment scripts for the project are saved when a project is built. These are the scripts that are used to deploy the objects in the project to an instance of Analysis Services.

  2. In the Configuration Properties node in the left pane, click Deployment.

    Review the deployment properties for the project. By default, the Analysis Services Project template configures an Analysis Services project to incrementally deploy all projects to the default instance of Analysis Services on the local computer, to create an Analysis Services database with the same name as the project, and to process the objects after deployment by using the default processing option. Related topic:Configuring Analysis Services Project Properties

    Tip

    If you want to deploy the project to a named instance of Analysis Services on the local computer or to an instance on a remote server, change the Server property to the appropriate instance name, such as <ServerName>&lt;InstanceName>.

    The following image shows the Analysis Services Tutorial Property Pages dialog box.

    Analysis Services Tutorial Property Pages dialog

  3. Click Cancel if you do not want to change the value of the Server property. Otherwise, click OK.

  4. In Solution Explorer, right-click the Analysis Services Tutorial project, and then click Deploy, or else click Deploy Analysis Services Tutorial on the Build menu.

    Business Intelligence Development Studio builds and then deploys the Analysis Services Tutorial project to the specified instance of Analysis Services by using a deployment script. The progress of the deployment is displayed in two windows: the Output window and the Deployment Progress – Analysis Services Tutorial window. The Output window displays the overall progress of the deployment. The Deployment Progress – Analysis Services Tutorial window displays the detail about each step taken during deployment. Related topics:Building Analysis Services Projects, Deploying Analysis Services Projects

  5. Open the Output window, if necessary, by clicking Output on the View menu.

    The following image shows the Deployment Progress - Analysis Services Tutorial and Output windows during deployment of the Analysis Services Tutorial project.

    Deployment Progress windows

  6. Review the contents of the Output window and the Deployment Progress – Analysis Services Tutorial window to verify that the cube was built, deployed, and processed without errors.

  7. On the Deployment Progress – Analysis Services Tutorial window, expand the Processing Dimension 'Customer'completed successfully node, expand the Processing Dimension Attribute 'Title'completed successfully node, and then expand the SQL queries 1 node.

    SQL queries 1 node in Deployment Progress window

  8. Double-click the SELECT DISTINCT statement.

    The query that was used to process the Title attribute in the Customer dimension appears in the View Details dialog box.

    The following image shows the query that was used to process the dimension attribute.

    Query used to process the dimension attribute

  9. Click Close.

  10. Collapse the Processing Dimension 'Customer' completed successfully node and then expand the Processing Cube 'Analysis Services Tutorial' completed successfully node, expand the Processing Measure Group 'Internet Sales' completed successfully node, expand the Processing Partition 'Internet Sales' completed successfully node, and then expand the SQL queries 1 node.

    The query that was used to process the Internet Sales partition in the Analysis Services Tutorial cube appears.

  11. Hide the Deployment Progress - Analysis Services Tutorial window by clicking the Auto Hide icon on the toolbar of the window.

  12. Hide the Output window by clicking the Auto Hide icon on the toolbar of the window.

You have successfully deployed the Analysis Services Tutorial cube to your local instance of Analysis Services, and then processed the deployed cube. You are now ready to browse the actual data in the cube.

Next Task in Lesson

Browsing the Deployed Cube

See Also

Other Resources

Deploying Analysis Services Projects
Configuring Analysis Services Project Properties

Help and Information

Getting SQL Server 2005 Assistance