Thursday, November 18, 2010

Dimension Permission Error after successfully processing the Dynamics AX OLAP

Introduction


I have recently been involved in hunting down a strange "bug" in all the Reporting Services reports which reported data from the General Ledger Cube. The error message itself was "The 'Measure' attribute for the 'Measure' dimension has generated dimension security expression that is not valid. DimensionPermission (1, 209) the member '[Cheque Transaction Amount - Bank]' was not found in the cube when the string, [Measures].[Cheque Transaction Amount - Bank], was parsed.". Any users who were not members of the Local Administrators Group on the SSAS server would get this error on reports trying to report from the General Ledger Cube.


Configuring the Default OLAP cubes


Those who have worked with the deployment of standard OLAP cubes for Dynamics AX knows the main job is to make the OLAP process. This can only be achieved by removing any elements in the Analysis database that still reference missing elements from the OLTP (the Dynamics AX relation database). You probably also know the fact that if you turn off configuration that represents database elements like tables and/or fields, these elements will effectively be removed upon database synchronization. So basically any table or field removed from the OLTP will result in possible errors when processing the OLAP. If you can process the OLAP without errors, you're good to go (well, almost).

The 'Measure' referenced in my error was in fact based on the "BankCheque" Configuration, which was turned off in this particular installation. I could verify the measure missing from the OLAP as expected. So why did the report throw this error?

The solution


I'm not entire sure why, but the solution was in the definition of each Role connected to the General Ledger Cube. With the default OLAP there are numerous predefined Roles. These roles more or less resembles the default installed Roles in Dynamics AX. They have a semantic relation, but that's all. Adjustments to role membership in Dynamics AX are not automatically copied to the Roles in the OLAP. They are separate. The Roles in the OLAP contains various settings for limiting the access to the analysis data. There are settings for limiting access to cubes and all the way down to limiting access to specific dimensions. Given all this, there was indeed a setting on several Roles naming this particular dimension in its security context.

Under Properties for the CFO role and under Dimension Data, you'll find a dropdown for available dimensions you may specify security restrictions for. These dimensions are limited to those common for the entire OLAP, and those specific for any cubes this role has access to. Under each Cube there is even a Measures Dimension which allows you to define security context down to attributes. This is the source for the reference to the invalid 'Measure' attribute, namely the [Measures].[Cheque Transaction Amount - Bank]. After taking this reference out the "Allowed member set", and saving the Role, everything was working perfectly. Well, I actually had to remove this reference from all Roles granting access to the General Ledger Cube.







Finally...


Why the users in the Local Administrators Group are not effected by this, and why the OLAP may process without errors even when the Roles reference invalid dimensions, that I do not know. Please feel free to message me or comment under this article.

I hope this helps someone!

1 comment:

  1. This was awesome. Thank you so much posting this. It saved me so much time. I don't think I would've ever been able to track this down.

    -Mat

    ReplyDelete