The Date Dimension is one of the most important dimensions in an Analysis Server (SSAS) cube. Cubes need a date dimension in order to analyze historical information. There are already many examples of date dimensions on the web, but, in this article, I think I can add my two-cents-worth of advice about creating a more complete and flexible date dimension. I will do this by walking you through an example in all its twists and turns. I will also demonstrate many features of SSAS, along the way, that can assist you to build cube dimensions, and features needed by the date dimension.

Analysis Services is a collection of OLAP supplied in Microsoft SQL Server. See more lessons http://www.learn-with-video-tutorials.com/analysis-services. 907 Pc 33 Software.

The Example I will build the example (see the link at the head of the article) based on AdventureWorksDW database. You can download AdventureWorksDW from but I will also show some additional fields that AdventureWorksDW doesn’t have, and which you could add to your own data warehouse (DW). Starting the Project You can download a sample start project here. The zip file has two folders: one with the start project and another with the completed project. The sample is a Visual Studio 2013 solution with a single multidimensional project that uses the fact table FactInternetSales and the dimensions ‘ Dim Promotion‘, ‘ Dim sales territory‘, ‘ Dim customer’ and ‘Dim product’. We could create a few more dimensions, but our objective here is to focus on the date dimension.

Before we start, we need to configure the project. The project needs to be tested and deployed to a SSAS server instance installed in multidimensional mode. You need to configure the sample project, inside the solution, pointing to a SSAS instance in your environment. Another important configuration is the Data Source View. The project has a Data Source named AdventureWorksDS and pointing the source database ( AdventureWorksDW). You need to change AdventureWorksDS configuration to point to the server where you installed this database.