Showing posts with label predefined. Show all posts
Showing posts with label predefined. Show all posts

Monday, March 12, 2012

Localizing cube elements

We're an ISV that builds a product which includes a predefined set of SSAS2005 cubes, dimensions, and measures. We want to support the localization of the various cube elements. The ideal way would be to use translations - however, we need to support Standard Edition, and my understanding is that translations are only supported under Enterprise Edition. :( So the question is, what's the best way to accomplish this and still support SE?

Right now we're looking at using AMO to programmatically translate the various OLAP elements (we also looked at directly modifying the XML/A deployment script, but aren't pursuing that option for process reasons). There are some concerns about this approach, however. There doesn't seem to be a language-independent way to identify specific OLAP objects from an OLAP client (there is an ID property on some objects, but as far as I can tell it isn't usable from ADOMD.NET, and it isn't present on all objects anyway). In other words, in our admin tools if we want to query a specific cube, there's no language independent way to reference it.

Also, if we change the names of, for example, a measure, we also need to change the expression for any calculations that reference that measure.

Is there some more elegant solution that we're missing here?

Thanks,
Kevin

Kevin.

You can argue back and fourth but looks like the answer for your case is to use translations :).
And that is the feature desinged specifically for the case you describe.

Edward.
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|||Oh, I agree - which is why I was extremely disappointed when translations was announced as an enterprise edition feature only. That decision really complicated the lives of ISVs. A nice compromise might have been to support a single translation on SE, so that ISVs could localize to one foreign language without having to rename all of their cube elements.

Anyway, it sounds like you're saying that isn't much of a good alternative here that supports SE.