Mastering Enterprise BI: Time Intelligence Pt. I - Page 6

We return to the Select how to define the connection page of the Data Source Wizard, where we see our new data connection appearing in the Data connections list, as depicted in Illustration 30.

We are returned to the Specify Target page of the Data Source Wizard, where we see our new data source appearing in the Data source selector, underneath the Data source view name, which is defaulted to DBJ_Adventure Works DW.

The Specify Target page of the Schema Generation Wizard appears, with the settings described, as shown in Illustration 33.

Here we are establishing the target database for the output of the Schema Generation Wizard. We will except the defaults and continue with schema generation.

The Subject Area Database Schema Options page appears. We will leave the Owning schema name at default (the name of the Analysis Services project within which we are working).

(As an aside, were we targeting an existing database which already had tables, we could be assured that the tables that we are about to create would remain physically independent from those that already exist within the sample Adventure Works DW database. This would allow us to easily isolate the new tables from those supporting other cubes, etc., affording an easy move / delete action at any point in time after creation, if desired.)

Because this is a practice session, we will leave the checkboxes for the various options selected. The settings might differ within a real world situation, depending upon our intended use of the output of the Schema Generation Wizard. Of particular note is the Populate time table(s) selector setting in the lower part of the page: the default setting is Populate, which meets our immediate purposes precisely. We wish to practice the generation of a Time table design from within the cube model that it will ultimately support. As we have noted, this byproduct of the “top-down” design approach can save time and effort in generating such a (populated) table - the table that we know will support the intended dimension, because it is “reverse engineered” from the very specifications of that dimension.

Within the stated context, the Subject Area Database Schema Options page appears as shown in Illustration 34.

We arrive at the Specify Naming Conventions page of the Schema Generation Wizard, which appears as depicted in Illustration 35.

While we would likely make adjustments to naming conventions to otherwise fit our individual environments and policies, we will leave them at default for the purposes of our practice exercise.

We are given an opportunity to verify options settings on the Completing the Wizard page that appears next, as shown in Illustration 36.

The Schema Generation Progress viewer appears, and logging of events begins. We note that several warning messages appear, informing us that various dimensions were not generated, due to their being “bound to a user table.” (This is expected for the dimensions existing within the template that we did not select earlier for adoption, as part of our new cube design). We note that the message Generation Completed Successfully appears (in green text) in the status area in the bottom left corner of the viewer, once generation is completed. We also note that an event is logged within the viewer informing us of the Committing changes to subject database event.

The Schema Generation Progress viewer appears, upon completion of schema generation, as depicted in Illustration 37.

We are returned to the Cube Structure tab within the Designer. We see a new Data Source View, reflecting the dimension and fact tables we have defined for our new cube, which appears as shown in Illustration 38.

We have now created our cube, as well as its underlying Data Source View. Moreover, we have created the tables that support our Data Source View within the designated target database, as we shall see in the section that follows.