SSIS - Sequence Container

SSIS is very powerful tool when it comes to ETL operations, there is always so much to learn and experiment with SSIS. One of the tasks which i had to do for a project was to create a series of tasks and organize them visually. The container gives the ability to group tasks which need to precede other tasks. For example, If you have to truncate a set of tables, delete data from some tables, once this is done, one needs to move on to Data Flow Tasks. Intially i started creating different control tasks in a sequence and connecting them through workflow. This was when i came across the control flow item called Sequence container. The neat thing about this control flow item is the ability to create a series of tasks within the container. There is a property in the sequence container which allows the developer to set the isolation level, in the SSIS package i created i set the property value for the isolationlevel to Serializable. On the whole this container allows the developer to organize a group of tasks.

SSAS 2008 - Member Properties

In Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services there used to be a feature called Member properties. In SSAS 2005 and SSAS 2008 it can be achieved through a different strategy. I was learning the important aspects of user defined hierarchies and attribute relationships in SSAS 2005 and SSAS 2008 through the videos available at LearnmicrosftBI. While working with attirbute relationships, there were two properties of attributes which were discussed. In BIDS 2005/2008 for each attribute in a dimension there are properties called AttributeHierachyEnabled and AttributeHierarchyVisible. In order to achieve the member properties type effect, the AttributeHierarchyEnabled should be to False for a particular attribute. Once this is done, the dimensions and cube need to processed. In the Browser tool available in BIDS, drag over the measures and then drag over the lowest member of the dimension as values to be filtered by.

When you right click on the value there is a list of options which appear, in that choose: Show properties in Screen Tips, in that option choose Show all properties in the Report. When the user hovers the mouse over the values, the properties will be displayed as Tool Tips. This is really a neat feature which can be used to build/search on member properties.