Perspectives with ADOMD.NET and AMO

I am trying to filter our application's cube metadata list (measures, kpis, dimensions, etc.) by perspectives.

Unless I have totally missed something it appears that ADOMD.NET has 0 support for perspectives. You can not iterate measures, dimensions, etc. by perspective using ADOMD.NET. Can anyone verify this or correct me if I'm missing something?

While AMO can be used to iterate measures, dimensions, etc. by perspective, none of its PerspectiveDimension, CubeDimension, PerspectiveMeasure, etc. objects contain UniqueName fields. AMO does not seem to provide any UniqueName fields. Can anyone also verify this or correct me if I'm wrong?

I am currently having to utilize both ADOMD.NET and AMO in order to build the metadata list and support perspective filtering, and I keep thinking there has to be a better way! This is also requiring a LOT of For Looping in order to match up an object in ADOMD.NET to the corresponding object in AMO.

Thanks,
Terry

Perspectives are returned as regular cubes in ADOMD.NET. For browsing data, they are cubes, while from the metadata point of view they are separate entities, so they appear separately in AMO, but not ADOMD.NET.

UniqueName is indeed not exposed in AMO because it's not part of the objects definitions (aka metadata). For example, a DimensionAttribute in AMO doesn't have the UniqueName property, but when browsing the members of that attribute, each will have an UniqueName.

Adrian Dumitrascu

|||Hi Adrian,

Thank you for your help! I'm still a bit confused though. I can not find any property setting within ADOMD.NET to set the perspective that I want to restrict by. Your previous post led me to believe it might be setting on the AdomdConnection object and that thereafter everything would be restricted to that perspective; however, I have not been able to find that in the documentation. Would you please clarify for me how to restrict everything returned in ADOMD.NET to a given perspective?

Thank you,
Terry|||

If you want to define what measures, dimensions and/or attributes to include in a perspective, you need to use AMO. The Cube class in AMO has a collection of Perspectives.

After that, the perspective will appear as any other cube (in excel, or when browsing with ADOMD.NET or other browser), alongside the other cubes and perspectives.

If you want certain users to only see certain measures, dimensions or attributes, but not the rest of the cube, dimensions or attributes, then using a perspective is not the way to go. Perspectives are not a security feature, they are only used to customize the view of a cube. Instead you should define a Role for each category of users and then CubePermissions. That ensures that certain users only see the data they are allowed.

|||Thanks Adrian! I wasn't expecting the perspective to show up as their own cubes, so I didn't look in the ADOMD.NET cube collection.

For others that need to know this, you can iterate all the perspectives of a given cube by looking at adomdConnection.Cubes(i).Properties("BASE_CUBE_NAME") = "My Real Cube" and then use each of those Cube objects to find the perspective-specific measures, dimensions, etc.

Thanks again,
Terry

Perspectives Defined in Analysis Cube not working in Report Builder

I have created a simple cube in BI Studio against an Oracle Relational Data Warehouse. In this cube I have created a perspective in which I have selected (included) only a small subset of measures and dimension. When I view this perspective on the Browse Tab of BI Studio, only the entities that were included in the perspective were available for report construction as was expected.

Next, I generated a model for this cube in Report Manager. Now here is the problem, I then opended the model in Report Builder and selected the same perspective from above, but all of the Entities in the cube were displayed including the fields I explicitely did not include in the perspective. I then looked at the .smdl file describing the Model and it looked like in the Perspective description section all of the cube's entities were included, even the ones that should not have been included. It seems as if the problem is ocurring durring the model generation. I also tried generating the model in Management Studio and it seems to be doing the same thing.

Any ideas on how to fix this? Could I be doing something wrong(probably)? I have to give a presentation soon and this is a big deal for the Project Stakeholders.

By the way, I am using the 180 Day Evaluation of Sql Server 2005 with SP2 CTP installed.

Help!!!!

Certainly the perspective in the Report Model should reflect the definition in the cube.

Does this apply to all the perspectives in the cube, if you define multiple of them?

|||Sorry for my delayed response. The answer to your question is yes, my previous message applied to all of the perspectives in the cube. And I have had the same problem on multiple cubes.|||I have the same problem. You already know a solution?

Perspectives Defined in Analysis Cube not working in Report Builder

I have created a simple cube in BI Studio against an Oracle Relational Data Warehouse. In this cube I have created a perspective in which I have selected (included) only a small subset of measures and dimension. When I view this perspective on the Browse Tab of BI Studio, only the entities that were included in the perspective were available for report construction as was expected.

Next, I generated a model for this cube in Report Manager. Now here is the problem, I then opended the model in Report Builder and selected the same perspective from above, but all of the Entities in the cube were displayed including the fields I explicitely did not include in the perspective. I then looked at the .smdl file describing the Model and it looked like in the Perspective description section all of the cube's entities were included, even the ones that should not have been included. It seems as if the problem is ocurring durring the model generation. I also tried generating the model in Management Studio and it seems to be doing the same thing.

Any ideas on how to fix this? Could I be doing something wrong(probably)? I have to give a presentation soon and this is a big deal for the Project Stakeholders.

By the way, I am using the 180 Day Evaluation of Sql Server 2005 with SP2 CTP installed.

Help!!!!

Certainly the perspective in the Report Model should reflect the definition in the cube.

Does this apply to all the perspectives in the cube, if you define multiple of them?

|||Sorry for my delayed response. The answer to your question is yes, my previous message applied to all of the perspectives in the cube. And I have had the same problem on multiple cubes.

Perspectives Defined in Analysis Cube not working in Report Builder

I have created a simple cube in BI Studio against an Oracle Relational Data Warehouse. In this cube I have created a perspective in which I have selected (included) only a small subset of measures and dimension. When I view this perspective on the Browse Tab of BI Studio, only the entities that were included in the perspective were available for report construction as was expected.

Next, I generated a model for this cube in Report Manager. Now here is the problem, I then opended the model in Report Builder and selected the same perspective from above, but all of the Entities in the cube were displayed including the fields I explicitely did not include in the perspective. I then looked at the .smdl file describing the Model and it looked like in the Perspective description section all of the cube's entities were included, even the ones that should not have been included. It seems as if the problem is ocurring durring the model generation. I also tried generating the model in Management Studio and it seems to be doing the same thing.

Any ideas on how to fix this? Could I be doing something wrong(probably)? I have to give a presentation soon and this is a big deal for the Project Stakeholders.

By the way, I am using the 180 Day Evaluation of Sql Server 2005 with SP2 CTP installed.

Help!!!!

Certainly the perspective in the Report Model should reflect the definition in the cube.

Does this apply to all the perspectives in the cube, if you define multiple of them?

|||Sorry for my delayed response. The answer to your question is yes, my previous message applied to all of the perspectives in the cube. And I have had the same problem on multiple cubes.

Permissions issue- a previous windows group still has full cube rights

Previously, a windows group was added to a 'full access users' role. It was removed and the cube was processed and deployed, replacing rights, but people in that group still have rights to see the data. They are not listed in any roles.

I've looked through all local windows groups on the supporting server and the group in question is not in any groups (ie, if they were in administrators, then they'd have full access through that). The people in the group are not administrators or domain administrators either.

Is there somewhere else I could check on the machine to better find the source of the problem and get the group removed?

Several places to check.

See if you allowed anonymous access to your cubes.
Check memebership of server-wide Admnistrators role.

It is sometimes little hard to track down amongst several groups what exactly is going on. To make sure you are looking at last version of data use SQL Management Studio to verify roles and memberships.

Edward.
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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

|||

I just checked if other users that never had rights could see the cube and they can't. Anonymous access cannot be allowed.

The windows group "Adminstrators" was checked, but I don't see the admin role present in the dwproj area.
Where would one look besides the roles folder in the solution explorer or this kb: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174561.aspx ? The group is not in any of these areas.

sql mgmt studio was used for examination - the cube was scripted to a file and scanned for groups and user names.

|||

In general there are 2 places to check:
One- role membership. And you check that on database role
Second - access permissions. There are several permissions on different objects. Cube, dimension ...

I also suggested you take a look at memebership of Analysis Server Administrators role and not OS Administrators group.

To access AS Administrators role right click on the Server name in SQL Management Studio and select properties and click on the Security node.

HTH

Edward.
--
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

|||It seems like all of these have been checked. The server security was examined and the cube's xmla was parsed - this should cover any cube/dimension security, right?|||

2 more things.

Make sure you installed latest product update.

And finally. It is good idea to get your security model examined by someone with good knowlege of Analysis Services 2005.

Edward.
--
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

|||For product updates, we are on sp1. I could not find any hot fixes related to this.
I will keep investigating and will see if the problem can be recreated on a copy of the cube.