Using the Offline Cube Processing feature of tX2012, we have reduced the OLAP processing time considerably, and we can process the data cubes several times a day. We have practically no downtime anymore and the end-user experience has improved greatly.” Martin Krogh Nielsen, Business Analyst, Wrist Ship Supply As Business Intelligence (BI) has become…
Writeback for SSAS Multidimensional
Cube writeback is used for budgeting, forecasting or any other scenario in which you need to enter data into your reporting structure. As an example you can imagine a budgeting scenario where actuals is provided by the source systems, while the budget amounts are entered in a front-end application such as Excel or Calumo. The…
Language Control for SSAS Multidimensional
When you operate in a multilingual environment, there is a need to deliver the presentation layer to the consumers of cubes in multiple languages. The translation capabilities of tX2012 allows you to easily maintain the translations for multiple languages in a single screen. Translations include both captions/labels for dimensions, measures, display folders etc. as well…
Data Compressions
Data compression is to your database what zip files are to the file system. It significantly reduces data storage and disk operations, both leading to improved performance. Storage is commonly reduced by 40-90%, depending of the compression type used: Row or page on staging areas and data warehouse respectively. Performance can often be improved by…
Multithreaded Execution
By default, execution of SSIS packages, data cleansing, dimension and cube processing etc. is performed single threaded. This means that tX2012 will only initialize calls towards SQL Server from a single thread (single process). With multithreaded execution it is possible to configure execution packages with a user-defined number of concurrent threads, which will execute against…
Team Development
In tX2012 we have added enhanced support for multiple concurrent developers, effectively allowing true team development. In previous timeXtender products, objects were locked at project level and although there are ways to use multiple projects to support multiple concurrent developers, a project is normally considered as the smallest amount of work for a single developer.…
Template Data Sources
When you need to extract data from multiple data sources of nearly identical structure, template data sources is there to help. In logical terms it is based on a single data source (the template) that is used to extract the source Meta data such as tables, views, fields, data types. An unlimited number of additional…
Multiple timeXtender Projects
In tX2012 you design and build your data warehouse solution within the context of a project. A project can be considered as a container that holds all the objects such as data sources, staging databases, tables, views, stored procedures, dimensions, cubes etc. tX2012 comes with one project out of the box, but you can add…
Export / Import Projects
The Meta data of a tX2012 project is persisted in the repository, using a SQL Server database for storage. This optionally also include version control and multiple environments transfer for automated promoting Meta data from development to test, QA, production environments. In addition it is also possible to export and import the Meta data in…
Data Warehouse
The overall purpose of a data warehouse is to integrate corporate data from various internal- and external data sources. Data is collected over time and stores historical events that are often not persisted in the source systems and is also commonly referred to as the single version of the truth, making the data warehouse an…
Data Staging
The data staging area is a temporary location for data between the source systems and the data warehouse. This is where source data is copied to in the extract phase of ETL and is the first integration point for data coming from multiple source systems. This is also where the majority of data cleansing and…
Data Lineage Diagrams
Most data warehouse developers have experienced the challenge of answering a common question like “what data source fields are we using for this measure?” and sometimes you can even add “and what are we doing to it in the ETL process?” If you are one of the many, that either do not have complete end…
Multiple Environment Deployment
Before I started using Multiple Environment Deployment, I had to build cubes outside of office hours, so that I didn’t disturb users in their work if I made mistakes or had to deploy new cubes.” Flemming Andersen, IT Manager, JP Group As the BI backend has become a mission critical asset, it is often…
Trace
Complete trace of a single entity within the Meta model. Trace between the cube and data source(s). See [Data Lineage Diagrams]
Version Control
Version control, also known as revision control, manages the changes done to a project in tX2012. A project is defined as the collection of objects such as tables, dimensions and cubes but also includes settings for source and destination connections. Version control has two major benefits, serving the purposes of documentation as well as the…
Reverse Engineer Data Warehouse
If you have an existing SQL Server data warehouse, the reverse engineering feature allows you to import tables, views, primary key and foreign key constraints, stored procedures and user-defined functions into the tX2012 meta model. This is especially useful when converting your hand coded data warehouses into timeXtender, and means that you do not have…
Indexes
tX2012 supports both automatic created indexes as well as rich capabilities to add your own non clustered indexes to fine tune the load performance of your data warehouse platform. Automatic indexes are added based on table classification such as dimension/fact/large/normal and transformations done on a table, to ensure well performing code out of the box.…
Lookups
One of the most commonly features of tX2012 is the ability to look up a value across tables using a simple drag and drop interface. Lookups can be used to perform both simple tasks as fetching a single value from a related table based on one or more joined fields, but also in more complex…
Multithreading
As part of getting the best load performance, it is possible to design execution packages for multi-threaded execution – or parallel execution, using a user-defined number of threads per package. The flexible design capabilities allow configurations such as a single threaded master package that controls multi-threaded sub packages. Another common configuration is a “string of…
Table Partitions
Table partitioning offers the ability to separate the contents of a logical table into separate physical storage units. This can greatly improve performance as only the partition(s) affected by a query, an insert or update operation will be touched. tX2012 manages partitions with a template based approach, which allows easy reuse of partition patterns across…
QlikView modeler & script generator
QlikView® is a very popular presentation tool, which allows business users to rapidly build views and dashboards. The back end implementation however very easily gets quite complex and time consuming, due to the need for scripting. Using the tX2012 drag and drop interface, you create QlikView® models ready for import into your QVW documents, thus…
Slowly Changing Dimensions
Slowly changing dimensions type 1 and 2 is a key to Kimball style dimensional modeling and is of course supported in tX2012 with an easy to use interface, that allows implementation within minutes – without any SQL knowledge required. The tX2012 implementation further includes the use of hashed values for better performance on large dimensions.…
Merge Deployment on OLAP
A limitation in the native Microsoft tools is preventing multiple cubes from different projects to be deployed into the same SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) database. The native functionality causes the last deployment to overwrite any previously deployed databases. With tX2012 you are able to deploy multiple cubes and dimensions from separate projects to be…
MDX Code Automation
Comes with MDX and VB function library with syntaxt template. Support for Intellisense. You achieve instant results for efficient prototyping
Reverse Engineer for SSAS Multidimensional
If you have an existing set of cubes, the reverse engineering feature allows you to import the dimensions, cubes, measures, calculations of an Analysis Services database into the tX2012 meta model. This is especially useful when converting your hand coded cubes into timeXtender, and means that you do not have to create your cubes from…
Advanced XMLA Scripting
Enhances the standard XMLA scripting language, and supports XPATH queries for XML manipulation.