All fields are being mapped as a WChar data type. What's with that? Is
it because my relational data is in an Oracle database?

And what is WChar anyway? Super-big Unicode character?

And I cannot appear to change it. When I'm editing a dimension
attribute properties, I can select a new data type but then the
attribute gets the squiggly red line underneath.

In addition, when I updated the data types in my relational data and
refreshed the DSV in the BI Workbench, the dimensions no longer
processed.

This is my first attempt at Analysis Server 2005 so I would appreciate
any article that provides context for this part of the process. In the
meantime, I will review books online more closely. Thanks.

-David

Comments inline.


<davidb (AT) mercurydata (DOT) com> wrote

WChar is the equivalent to Unicode. If the source system were SQL
Server, your columns would be nchar, nvarchar, etc. I'm not famliar enough
with Oracle to state with any confidence that their varchar, varchar2
datatypes are unicode...


complaining about trying to fit a unicode field into a non-unicode field.

system, the DSV update won't update the dimension attributes automatically.
You have to do this manually or delete and redefine your dimensions. Don't
know if this intended behavior or not...

Look for "Datawarehouse Toolkit with SQL Server 2005". Ralph Kimball is
a co-author or something along those lines. It's a good starting point.

I am new to this as well. I am working my way through the 2005 Analysis
Services Step by Step book (by Microsoft Press I think).

This is my first look into any sort of data warehousing (plus I have limited
exposure to SQL Server) at all and the book has been OK so far. I have found
that there was a decent amount of detail but my lack of background might
have made the book more difficult for me (although I do think they explain
things pretty well). I did also find that I needed to try things my own way
then go back and reread a chapter to get a better understanding of what they
were explaining in the first place (again, I think it was more me then the
book).

Additionally, I am 10 chapters in and I don't recall seeing anything about
getting the source data into the warehouse. I am pretty sure you can do a
data conversion in Integration Services when you ETL (Extract - Transform -
Load) it from Oracle.

Good luck.



<davidb (AT) mercurydata (DOT) com> wrote