AS2005 - MDX Debugger

AS2005 - MDX Debugger

• Rob Romito

  Only BOL reference I saw so far to the MDX Script Debugger was in AS 2005 Tutorial - Lesson 6. However, Teo Lachev's "Applied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005" book covers it on p.343-345; and Mosha mentioned it as a topic that he could cover in his blog in future:

  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms169878(SQL.90).aspx

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  1. In the Calculation Expressions pane, click in the margin to the left of the previous statement to set a breakpoint.

     Notice that a red dot appears in that margin and that the statement is highlighted in red, as shown in the following image. When you execute this project in debug mode, the changes to your project are deployed to your instance of Analysis Services, the cube is processed, and the calculation script executes until the breakpoint is encountered. You can then step through the remaining scripts one by one. If you do not set a breakpoint and run the project in debug mode, the calculation script will break at the first calculation script, the CALCULATE statement.

  2. On the Debug menu, click Start Debugging (or press F5 on your keyboard).

     The project is deployed and processed, and the calculation script executes until the breakpoint is encountered.

  3. Hide the Watch 1 window and the Command window.

     Notice the Data pane that appears at the bottom of the Calculations tab to help you with debugging, as shown in the following image.

  4. In this debug Data pane, add Sales Amount Quota to the data area, add Date.Fiscal Time to the column area, and then add Employee Name from the Employee dimension to the row area.

     Notice that the FY 2005 member of the Fiscal Year level for the Sales Amount Quota measure for each employee contains no value in the data area for the Sales Quota Amount measure, as shown in the following image. By default, empty cells are displayed in the Data pane when you are in debug mode.

  5. Press F10 to execute the THIS statement and calculate the sales quota for fiscal year 2005.

     Notice that the cells in the Data pane at the intersection of the Sales Amount Quota measure, the FY 2005 dimension member, and the Employee Name member are now calculated.

  6. Right-click the data area and then click Show Empty Cells to remove the check mark next to this option and hide all empty cells. This will make it easier to view all the employees who have sales amount quota values, as shown in the following image.

  7. In the Data pane, remove FY 2002, FY 2003, and FY 2004 from the column area and then try to expand FY 2005 in the column area.

     Notice that you cannot expand FY2005 because the values for the H1 FY 2005 members at the intersection of the Sales Amount Quota measure and the Employee Name attribute hierarchy were not calculated (because they were outside the current scope).

  8. To view the empty cells for the values for H1 FY 2005 members, right-click the data area and then click Show Empty Cells to show all empty cells, as shown in the following image.

  9. On the Debug menu, click Stop Debugging (or press Shift-F5 on your keyboard).

  10. Remove the breakpoint in the calculation script, by clicking the breakpoint in the left margin.

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• Mingxia

  Thanks Deepak...

  I just noticed that the tutorial contained a reference to the debugger, and Teo's book should be in on its way.

  
  
  
• AS2005 - MDX Debugger