- Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Business Intelligence Development Beginner’s Guide
- Reza Rad
- 541字
- 2021-08-13 17:55:22
Time for action – viewing the cube in the browser
After creating the cube, you can view it in the cube browser. There are two ways to open the cube browser: through SQL Server Management Studio and through the built-in cube browser in the SSDT. The SSMS cube browser will be useful when we deploy the cube to an SSAS Server (for details on deployment, refer to the Deploying and processing section of this chapter). For this example, we use the SSDT cube browser.
To browse the cube, processing is required. Processing is the process of extracting data from a data warehouse, applying the cube's calculations and structures to it, and loading it into the OLAP cube's structure. Perform the following steps to view the cube:
- In Solution Explorer, right-click on the project Chapter 02 SSAS Multidimensional and choose Process.
- You will see a dialog box stating The Server contents appears to be out of date. Would you like to build and deploy the project first?. Answer it by clicking on Yes.
- In the Process window, leave all the configurations as the default and click on Run.
- After completing the Process Progress step, close the Process window.
- Go to the Browser tab, which is the last tab in the cube designer.
- If you've got a message saying that the database does not exist or the cube is not up to date, try to reconnect the browser. You can click on the Reconnect button, which is the third icon from the top left-hand side of the Browser tab.
- In the Browser tab, from the Metadata pane, under the Internet Sales measures, drag-and-drop Sales Amount into the main empty pane in the middle. Do the same for the Order Quantity measure.
- You will see a grand total of Sales Amount and Order Quantity calculated from the cube.
- From the Metadata pane, under the Sales Territory dimension, drag-and-drop Sales Territory Key into the main pane as shown in the following screenshot:
What just happened?
You deployed and processed the cube in the previous example in order to be able to view the cube in the browser. In the last section of this chapter, we will discuss deployment and processing in more detail.
Viewing the cube in the browser of SSDT helps SSAS developers to check the frontend view of the cube from the user's perspective. In this example, you've seen the grand total of Sales Amount shown easily with a drag-and-drop in the browser window.
Slicing and dicing the Sales Amount by Sales Territory is also easily done by dragging-and-dropping the Sales Territory Key dimension in the browser. However, you probably noticed that the Sales Territory dimension only has one attribute, which is a key, and the key numbers don't make sense for a business user. So, for the next section, we need to bring descriptive information as additional attributes in the Sales Territory dimension and other dimensions of the cube.
On the other hand, the Sales Amount and Order Quantity dimension scan be shown with thousand separators and with a suitable format (for example, currency for the sales amount) in order to be more appropriate from the user's point of view. In the next section, we will change the display format of measures.