Analysis Services Partition Processing

Recently, while trawling the internet, I noticed that there are not a lot of SSIS examples detailing how to process Analysis Services cubes, especially if you are using Analysis Services partitioning. So I thought I would add an approach I have been using over the last few years.

While reading this you are probably wondering what all the fuss is about. Why not just use the Analysis Services Processing Task? Well, I guess this is definitely an option when processing dimensions and full cubes or measure groups with small data sets. This task is very useful and does provide a logging framework with a lot of detail. However, it is not dynamic. If the partitioning strategy defined is by month for example and the requirement is to process just those partitions with new data, then a more dynamic approach may be needed.

This is the scenario for which I am aiming this blog. This approach does add more code and therefore possibly more maintenance but may be a necessity when encountering larger data sets.