Running the Report Preparation DTS Task

Article
11/12/2009

You use the Report preparation DTS task to populate the online analytical processing (OLAP) cubes with the data in the Data Warehouse. Commerce Server 2002 uses OLAP cubes to organize the summarized data in the Data Warehouse so that the reports run in the Analysis modules complete faster. The Report preparation DTS task must be run every time data is imported into or deleted from the Data Warehouse. For information about OLAP cubes, see SQL Server Books Online.

Notes

If multiple sites are sharing a Data Warehouse, run the Report preparation task once to process data for all the sites.

When run, the Report preparation task processes all the sites in a Data Warehouse. Do not run the DTS task separately for each site; it will impact performance of the Data Warehouse.
The first time you run the Report preparation task to populate the OLAP cubes in the Data Warehouse, you must select full cube processing. After you have run the Report preparation task, you can perform incremental cube processing to load only new data into the OLAP cubes.
You must also select full cube processing after you delete all data from the Data Warehouse. For information about deleting data from the Data Warehouse, see Running the Data Deletion DTS Task.

Even if you run the Report preparation task in incremental mode, it might still display an increasing time-to-completion because it must perform full processing on the following cubes:

Cube	Processing mode considerations
Page Usage	Contains the URI dimension, which is an always full process dimension.
Entry Pages	Contains the URI dimension, which is an always full process dimension.
Exit Pages	Contains the URI dimension, which is an always full process dimension.
mscsSales	Contains facts, which can change; therefore, the cube cannot be incrementally processed.
Basket Events	Contains facts, which can change; therefore, the cube cannot be incrementally processed.
Buyer Visits	Contains facts, which can change; therefore, the cube cannot be incrementally processed.

The Report preparation task will not work in a clustered OLAP environment, especially if a "retryable" error or a failover occurs. For information about "retryable errors," see ETL Process for the Report Preparation DTS Task.
The Report preparation task might report errors when processing OLAP dimensions and cubes if the information necessary to populate those objects has not been imported into the Data Warehouse. The error message is displayed in the following format:

     Processing error [Source data contains no rows] <object name>

If you are importing a subset of data into the Data Warehouse (for example, you are not running the Product Catalog data import task), you might want to disable the processing of objects for which there will be no data. This will prevent the [Source data contains no rows] error messages.

To disable processing of Analysis Services objects, set the ProcessingEnabled flag to 0 in the CubeProcInfo and DimProcInfo tables for the cubes and dimensions you do not want to process.

To populate OLAP cubes with data

Run the Configuration synchronization DTS task to synchronize your site configuration with the Data Warehouse. For instructions, see Running the Configuration Synchronization DTS Task.
Expand Microsoft SQL Server, expand SQL Server Group, and then expand the server on which your Data Warehouse is installed.
Right-click Data Transformation Services, and then click New Package.

Alternatively, if you are changing an existing package, right-click Data Transformation Services, click All Tasks, and then select Open Package. In the Select File dialog box, click the package you want to change, and then click Open.
On the Task menu, click Report preparation (Commerce Server).

In the Prepare Reports Properties dialog box, do the following:

Use this	To do this
Description	Type a description of the Report preparation task. The maximum number of characters for the description is 255.
Site name	Select the site for which you are populating the OLAP cubes.
Incremental	Select to process the OLAP cubes incrementally.
Full	Select to process the OLAP cubes in their entirety.

Click OK.
On the Package menu, click Execute.

The Executing Package dialog box appears, showing the progress of your import. When the import process is complete, the Package Execution Results dialog box informs you that it completed successfully.
Click OK, and then click Done.

The data is loaded into the OLAP cubes. You can now use the Commerce Server Business Analytics System, including Commerce Server reports, to analyze the data in the Data Warehouse. For more information about running reports, see Business Desk Analysis.

Running the Report Preparation DTS Task

See Also

Additional resources