Accesing cube browser

My boss saw the Browser tab of a cube in an Analysis Services project in BIDS. He says he want to access it for designing his own reports in real time. I suppose the cube browser is not intended to be used directly by the users but if the boss says he want it, he means he want it.

So I wonder if there is any way to access the cube browser from managed code. Is it any kind of ActiveX control or any other thing callable by code?

Hi,

I am also facing the same problem.

Ronald

|||The cube browser in BIDS contains different controls, which were not developed for public use. One can still use its major part - Office Pivot Table, which is a part of the Office WEB Components, but in order to write programs with it one needs to have the "design time license". Otherwise the component will switch to view only mode.

Besides the license problems with OWC one would have to write additional code to expose the metadata according to AS2005 rules. The metadata browser of the pivot table shows maps the metadata according to AS2000 rules and we make it hidden.|||One more comment. If the boss will be content with calling "something" while the "report model" would be right in the BIDS's Cube Browser page then it is possible to write Visual Studio Add - In, which would access the pivot table throught its documented object model.

Write me at andrewgaATmsnDOTcom and i will send back a zip with a short C# project, which can be used as a starting point. Although i did not go any further that starting point myself (the goal was different).

Accesing cube browser

My boss saw the Browser tab of a cube in an Analysis Services project in BIDS. He says he want to access it for designing his own reports in real time. I suppose the cube browser is not intended to be used directly by the users but if the boss says he want it, he means he want it.

So I wonder if there is any way to access the cube browser from managed code. Is it any kind of ActiveX control or any other thing callable by code?

Hi,

I am also facing the same problem.

Ronald

|||The cube browser in BIDS contains different controls, which were not developed for public use. One can still use its major part - Office Pivot Table, which is a part of the Office WEB Components, but in order to write programs with it one needs to have the "design time license". Otherwise the component will switch to view only mode.

Besides the license problems with OWC one would have to write additional code to expose the metadata according to AS2005 rules. The metadata browser of the pivot table shows maps the metadata according to AS2000 rules and we make it hidden.|||One more comment. If the boss will be content with calling "something" while the "report model" would be right in the BIDS's Cube Browser page then it is possible to write Visual Studio Add - In, which would access the pivot table throught its documented object model.

Write me at andrewgaATmsnDOTcom and i will send back a zip with a short C# project, which can be used as a starting point. Although i did not go any further that starting point myself (the goal was different).

Acces to SQL guidence?

OK I have been trying on my own to move from Access to SQL express/Developer. I have not found much in the way of guidence. Any suggestions? I would rank myself as fairly advanced with Access but just a newby to the SQL products... I keep blasting into walls and issues in the SQL world and would rather learn from someone elses' hardship rather than re-invent what has been undoubtably been already discovered.

I do fairly advanced reports and Large imports, Hence the need for developer rather than express, since the express import facility is hopelessly crippled. Even the developer SSIS is not well doccumented and seems pretty buggy and hard to use, even with the wizzards, As for reports.... well I'm expecting that to be a fairly had road to climb also...

Your are in a common position so rest assured many of us have been there. One of the easiest things I tend to do in this situation is learn as the need arises.

For example, creating relationships in access is very easy. You will find no such "GUI" way in sql server to create relationships. You can instead use management studio to do the same thing, but you just won't have the pretty layout that access has.

Also, if you are familiar with access you probably are aware of using an access project (intended I think for an SQL server type database situation).

So I would jump around this forum and other forums and find out the answers to the questions you need as these issues arise. You may want to pickup and intro to sql server book just to get an overview of the tools in sql server, but if you are the hands on type you may just want to jump right in. When you do install the dev edition you will (or may be -- I was) overwhelemd by the number of features installed. Keep it simple and focus on one task at a time.

E.g. create a simple db and run some queries and forget about configuring remote access and things like that at first.

I hope some of this was helpful. Do you have any specific questions about the change?

Ranginald|||

Thanks for the reply. Indeed that is exactly what I'm doing, jumping in that is. Its the way I've always learned the next new thing, in fact I've been involved with computers for more than 20 years now...Generally books are for sissies!

But on the other hand do you have any you would particularly single out as being good?

Here is some of my experience which may help the next person on this trail....I still don't get why someone has not addressed the topic more comprehensively since it seems that this is a path that many will be embarking on....

Actually I find the GUI table relationship thing to be fairly transferable to SQL management studio, so far. I miss being able to use vb in queries though...

so far I have a basic import going using ssis, (boy that wasn't easy) The SSIS tool seems very poorly supported, for instance I created an import job (via wizard), and just opened it and closed it with no modifications and it generated errors that it did not generate when first created by the wizard! Not to mention the terminations for truncated fields that there is no ready documentation how to accept rather than terminate.. So an import that took 5 minutes to do in Access took Hours to do in SSIS from a basic Flat text file.

I have imported a bunch of tables from access (easier)

I have done some derived tables and views, (not too hard) but I'm not to the advanced stuff yet.

Written one report, pretty basic and I'm thinking the SQL tool looks pretty hard relative to advanced reports in Access.

|||Glad I could help. I've always liked Wrox books. They are well written and to the point. I'm sure you know this already but whenever I want to buy a book I look on amazon for the user rating first to see if it's worth it.

Good luck.
Ranginald

About Sql25K and MDAC libraries

Dear all,
There is a problem which I am concerned about and is that kind of
compatibility own the old libraries, i.e, ado 2.5,2.6.,2.7sp1 within a Sql
Server 2005 framework.
We have a lot of old applications running with 2.6 and using RDO or even
DAO!!!
Does anyone have or is awared of any link related, any map or schema very
representative of all this stuff? Is very tricky try to imagine how manage
myself with such diversity of applications
Thanks in advance and regards,
Enric wrote on Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:15:27 -0800:

> Dear all,
> There is a problem which I am concerned about and is that kind of
> compatibility own the old libraries, i.e, ado 2.5,2.6.,2.7sp1 within a Sql
> Server 2005 framework.
> We have a lot of old applications running with 2.6 and using RDO or even
> DAO!!!
> Does anyone have or is awared of any link related, any map or schema very
> representative of all this stuff? Is very tricky try to imagine how manage
> myself with such diversity of applications
> Thanks in advance and regards,
I have some VB apps using ADO 2.1 via ODBC that work fine with SQL Server
2005. ADO is an abstraction layer, not a driver library. SQL Server 2005
still supports the older connection methods.
Dan

About Sql25K and MDAC libraries

Dear all,
There is a problem which I am concerned about and is that kind of
compatibility own the old libraries, i.e, ado 2.5,2.6.,2.7sp1 within a Sql
Server 2005 framework.
We have a lot of old applications running with 2.6 and using RDO or even
DAO!!!
Does anyone have or is awared of any link related, any map or schema very
representative of all this stuff? Is very tricky try to imagine how manage
myself with such diversity of applications
Thanks in advance and regards,Enric wrote on Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:15:27 -0800:
> Dear all,
> There is a problem which I am concerned about and is that kind of
> compatibility own the old libraries, i.e, ado 2.5,2.6.,2.7sp1 within a Sql
> Server 2005 framework.
> We have a lot of old applications running with 2.6 and using RDO or even
> DAO!!!
> Does anyone have or is awared of any link related, any map or schema very
> representative of all this stuff? Is very tricky try to imagine how manage
> myself with such diversity of applications
> Thanks in advance and regards,
I have some VB apps using ADO 2.1 via ODBC that work fine with SQL Server
2005. ADO is an abstraction layer, not a driver library. SQL Server 2005
still supports the older connection methods.
Dan

About Sql25K and MDAC libraries

Dear all,
There is a problem which I am concerned about and is that kind of
compatibility own the old libraries, i.e, ado 2.5,2.6.,2.7sp1 within a Sql
Server 2005 framework.
We have a lot of old applications running with 2.6 and using RDO or even
DAO!!!
Does anyone have or is awared of any link related, any map or schema very
representative of all this stuff? Is very tricky try to imagine how manage
myself with such diversity of applications
Thanks in advance and regards,Enric wrote on Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:15:27 -0800:

> Dear all,
> There is a problem which I am concerned about and is that kind of
> compatibility own the old libraries, i.e, ado 2.5,2.6.,2.7sp1 within a Sql
> Server 2005 framework.
> We have a lot of old applications running with 2.6 and using RDO or even
> DAO!!!
> Does anyone have or is awared of any link related, any map or schema very
> representative of all this stuff? Is very tricky try to imagine how manage
> myself with such diversity of applications
> Thanks in advance and regards,
I have some VB apps using ADO 2.1 via ODBC that work fine with SQL Server
2005. ADO is an abstraction layer, not a driver library. SQL Server 2005
still supports the older connection methods.
Dan

About plug-in algorithms in SQL Server 2005

Hi, all here,

I am having a question about plug-in algorithms in SQL Server 2005. Since we are able to implement our own algorithms in SQL Server 2005 analysis services architecture, so my question is: what benefits can to a great extent be achieved? Like say, we are going to implement a plug-in algorithm, so what considerations should be concerned?

Thanks a lot in advance for any guidance and help.

The plug-in architecture allows you to implement any algorithm that consumes data in attribute value pairs. Analysis Services takes care of many infrastructure needs so that your development can focus on what's important to you - the details of the algorithm.

For example, AS takes care of

data access, pulling the data from a variety of sources|||Hi, Jamie, thanks a lot.|||This white paper provides an overview of the benefits of the plug-in architecture , along with links to more technical resources: Add Custom Data Mining Algorithms to SQL Server 2005.|||

Hi, Raman, Thanks a lot.

In addition, would you please make sure that what languages are supported in data mining plug-in framework for implementation? Thanks a lot.

|||The plug-in infrastructure passes on client locale information as appropriate in the contextservices object but it's up to you as the algorithm implementor to return the appropriate localized strings (and numbers, as the case may be). Ideally, plug-in algorithms should support all 10 languages supported by SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services.|||Hi, Raman, thanks a lot.

About Login Account

Hi everyone,
I have a simple question for you which is too important for me.
My question is about logins in my own(local) server.
I know that my local server(my computer's server) has to default login account which are called sa and BUILTIN/ADMINISTRATOR. While I am using my own server, I do not know which default login account is used by my Server since I use windows authentication while connecting to the Server.
Another question is that while adding new login account for my own Server, I noticed that there is a choice which is comprised of Grant and Deny for the Security. What is the meaning and usage of this ?

Thanks and Regards

I suggest reading some of the security papers of Microsoft or other sites covering SQL Server Authentication, like

http://www.developer.com/tech/article.php/721441

For the beginning , sa is the sysadminstrator account (and which is a SQL Server login), Builtin/Adminstrators is a WIndows groups which is also in the role of the sysadmins by default.

You can either Grant Access to a SQL Server database or Deny access. Grant permissions are always additive, deny is restricitve, which means that if a user is in a special Windows group which is allowed to access the server but is in another group which is denied access to the server, access will be denied to him.

Jens SUessmeyer.

http://www.sqlserver2005.de

|||

Thanks for your good tutorial reference but I could not understand the following paragraph.
Would you mind explaining it to me clearly ?

With Windows Authentication we recommending placing users into NT groups and adding the NT group login to SQL Server. This powerful feature allows you to group your users together at the NT Domain level and apply permissions at the SQL Server level. For example a group named sales could exist in the NT Domain. A new login based on the NT sales group could be added to SQL Server. When a new NT account is created the NT administrator can add the new account to the NT group named sales. The SQL Server DBA can apply the appropriate role(s) and permissions to the sales group. The new NT login automatically contains the necessary permissions to log in to SQL Server because the NT sales group was previously granted a login. This strategy makes it easy for new users to be added the system.

|||

Sure,

assume the following situation. You have a production department with 5000 employees. One day you create a table storing information about timesheet. you want every employee to enter his worked time into that table. You could either grant all 5000 employees individually rights on the table to insert data or you can use the possible existing Windows group which already includes all the 500 employees and which is maintained through the active directory. So if any user will leave the company / production you don′t have to keep track as a database adminstrator of the security, because as the employee is deleted from the group he will have no longer access to the table. So you only have to do the work at a single point, the Active diretory.

HTH, Jens Suessmeyer.

http://www.sqlserver2005.de

|||

Indeed, thanks very much for your explanatory reply but I wonder that how I can create a Windows group authentication.

|||Hi,

first some more to read :-) http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2000/reskit/part3/c1061.mspx?mfr=true

If you have a domain simply create a Windows group, put user in and create a WIndows login in SQL Server naming the group. Although the creation dialog is named Windows login you can both create a Windows login from a user or a group.

HTH, Jens Suessmeyer.

http://www.sqlserver2005.de
|||

Thanks for your explanatory reply, but I have still some doubts about Windows Authentication.
Is it really possible to use Windows Authentication in order to connect an another SQL Server in my computer ? I think that we can only use Windows Authentication mode for our own local server, is it true ?

|||

Jens Suessmeyer wrote:

I suggest reading some of the security papers of Microsoft or other sites covering SQL Server Authentication, like

http://www.developer.com/tech/article.php/721441

For the beginning , sa is the sysadminstrator account (and which is a SQL Server login), Builtin/Adminstrators is a WIndows groups which is also in the role of the sysadmins by default.

You can either Grant Access to a SQL Server database or Deny access. Grant permissions are always additive, deny is restricitve, which means that if a user is in a special Windows group which is allowed to access the server but is in another group which is denied access to the server, access will be denied to him.

Jens SUessmeyer.

http://www.sqlserver2005.de

Another question is that I connect my own SQL Server with Windows Authentication mode.
When I tried to connect with SQL server Authentication mode, I could not accomplish it.
So for uor own local server, is not it allowed to connect SQL Server with SQL server Authentication mode.
Besides, As I said before, I connect my own SQL Server with Windows Authentication mode, so does this mean that I use default Builtin/Adminstrators login in order to connect ?
|||

Yes you are appearantly using Windows authentication. The mentioned group is configured by default to have access to SQL Server. If you can′t access your Server using SQL Server authentication you might not have switch the authentication mode to mixed. For that navigate in the managment Studio to the server properties, in the security tabs and switch to "Mixed Mode", you should be able to connect with any SQL Server login then (by default there is a user with the name sa (system administrator). (make sure you restart your SQL Server in order to apply the changes)

HTH, Jens Suessmeyer.

http://www.sqlserver2005.de

|||

Again thanks vey much for your explanatory reply and would you mind also replying my second question since they make me very confused ?

Thanks and Best wishes

|||

Mhmm, don′t really know which question you mean but if you mean the BUILTIN\Administrators question: YOu can anser this on your own, are you in the administator group ? If yes, you are currently using that. You can have several group memberships all the permissions set in these groups are additive as long as you will get a permission set which denys anything to you.

HTH, Jens Suessmeyer.

http://www.sqlserver2005.de

|||

Hmm, thanks but this is not really the answer of my question.
I asked that in my local server, while I am connecting to this (my local server(my computer's server) ) , which role do I have , sa(Sytem Admistrator) or BUILTIN/ ADMISTRATOR.
And besides, I am connecting to my own local SQL server with windows Authentication so does it means that I am BUILTIN/ ADMISTRATOR ?

Thanks

|||

Jens Suessmeyer wrote:

Sure,

assume the following situation. You have a production department with 5000 employees. One day you create a table storing information about timesheet. you want every employee to enter his worked time into that table. You could either grant all 5000 employees individually rights on the table to insert data or you can use the possible existing Windows group which already includes all the 500 employees and which is maintained through the active directory. So if any user will leave the company / production you don′t have to keep track as a database adminstrator of the security, because as the employee is deleted from the group he will have no longer access to the table. So you only have to do the work at a single point, the Active diretory.

HTH, Jens Suessmeyer.

http://www.sqlserver2005.de

My another question is that as I understood form your reply, firslt we should create a domain name for this Window Group. Then, we add all our corresponding users into this domain while using Windows Authentication for our group. So I ask that how can I create a group( domain name) ?

Again thanks.
Sorry for asking too much question but they really make me confused too much.
Regards|||YOu can either login using SQL Server authentication, then you have to specify a SQL Server account and apssword during the login OR you can use the Integrated security (you don′t need to provide the credentials then because it is integrated and uses your Windows context)

I don′t know in which groups you belong on your local server, but if you are using the default settings, didn′t grant any other group access to the SQL Server (and though this is your own server) I assume that you use the group memebership of BUILTIN \Administrator to authenticate against the server.

HTH, Jens Suessmeyer.

http://www.sqlserver2005.de
|||

Jens Suessmeyer wrote:

YOu can either login using SQL Server authentication, then you have to specify a SQL Server account and apssword during the login OR you can use the Integrated security (you don′t need to provide the credentials then because it is integrated and uses your Windows context)

I don′t know in which groups you belong on your local server, but if you are using the default settings, didn′t grant any other group access to the SQL Server (and though this is your own server) I assume that you use the group memebership of BUILTIN \Administrator to authenticate against the server.

HTH, Jens Suessmeyer.

http://www.sqlserver2005.de

Again and again thank very much for your all extreme explanatory replies.

Now I think I kept the idea. As I understood, By default, I connect my own local server with Windows Authentication as a BUILTIN \Administrator.This group is not regarded as a Group in my opinion. Because, we can not add new user into this group. There is only one person who is the owner of the local SQL server(me) in this group. So what is the real advantage of this group ?
Meanwhile, how can I learn my sa(System administrator)'s password in order to connect my own local SQL Server as a sa(System administrator) ?

Thanks