Use the Dundas control to display multidimensional datasets on Web Applications

Summary

[20111014 annotation] The content described in this article has expired and Dundas does not provide related components. For details, see the Dundas official website.

Many friends who are engaged in Bi projects are concerned about how to display multi-dimensional data sets. I recommend using OLAP components under Dundas. This article mainly describes the use of Dundas OLAP controls, issues that need to be paid attention to during development, and some experience of the author in the development process.

 

Dundas OLAPControl Overview

Dundas is a company specializing in the development of commercial chart components. The previous reporting services chart components were very famous and were later included in sqlserver 2008 by Microsoft, in addition, there are many products for Microsoft platforms such as Sharepoint. Microsoft released it some time ago. the chart component under net 3.5 is very similar to Dundas, in which the author does not dare to speculate, however, I personally feel that Microsoft wants to acquire related products to enrich its own products, which is a good thing for developers. Of course, this is just a delusion of the author.

 

Dundas OLAPEnvironment Construction

The Development Environment used in this article is vs2008, the corresponding Dundas OLAP control version is vs2008 of 6.1, the database uses sqlserver2008, and the sample database and multi-dimensional dataset uses adventure works. Because adomd. Net 9 is required for Version 6.1, it must be downloaded separately. Related resources are as follows:

Sqlserver2008Example database:

Http://www.codeplex.com/MSFTDBProdSamples/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx

Dundas OLAP for ASP. NET(Registration required ):

Http://dundas.com/Downloads/downloadRequest.aspx? SKU = dowc6.1vs8eval

Adomd. net9For more information, see (ArticleBottom ):

Http://www.cnblogs.com/aspnetx/archive/2007/05/22/755793.html

It should be noted that after sqlserver2008 is installed, the built-in adomd. Net version is 10, so version 9 needs to be installed separately. Maybe Dundas will consider version 10 in the next version. However, I have not found the differences between the two versions.

Suppose you have installed vs2008 and sqlserver2008, then you can install the Dundas OLAP control. It is a setup installation package, which is not described too much here, follow the registration information to proceed. The installation of the SQL Server Sample Database is not described too much here. It is worth mentioning that the analysis Serivces project needs to find the project file for manual deployment in the directory after installation. The installation directory is usually located:

C: \ Program Files \ Microsoft SQL Server \ 100 \ tools \ samples \ adventureworks 2008 Analysis Services Project \ Enterprise

The deployment may be slightly different from sqlserver2005 and needs to be analyzed based on the specific situation. If you have any questions, contact the author. When you have your own multi-dimensional dataset, you can directly use your own multi-dimensional dataset.

After the preceding environment is ready, you can perform simple OLAP web development.

 

Add Dundas OLAPControl to project

After Dundas is installed, open vs2008 to create a web applicationx project. Of course, the web site is also available, but here we select Web application.

Normally, you can see the Dundas OLAP control in the toolbar on the left, for example:

In most cases, these controls may not appear in the toolbar and need to be manually added. The process of adding a namespace may be painful. In fact, you only need to click the namespace control bar to sort it by the first letter, and then find all the Dundas naming Control headers to be added. For example:

In addition, you need to add related Dundas OLAP references here. Otherwise, the project will not be compiled and the system prompts that the components are missing. You can add all Dundas headers in the Add reference dialog box, for example:

At this point, the preparation is complete.

 

Dundas OLAPSimple Application

We use the fastest way to create a standard OLAP web application. Here we mainly use the adomdnetdataprovider control and olapclient control. Drag two widgets to the page, as shown in:

The adomdnetdataprovider control is like a multi-dimensional data source. You must specify a connection string. The default connection string is as follows (is it a bit like the sqlserver Data Engine ?) :

Data Source = localhost; Catalog = adventure works dw;

The author analyzed that this is for the sqlserver2005 version. For the example database we just mentioned in MySQL 2008, it is deployed with the following name:

So we need to change it:

Data Source = localhost; Catalog =Adventure works dwx 2008;

If you use your own multi-dimensional dataset, you can change the name of the multi-dimensional dataset after the catalog.

The olapclient can be seen literally as an OLAP client, which includes perspective selection, dimension and measurement value selection, and can be switched back and forth between the grid and chart. There is a property here we need to set, dataproviderid, that is, you need to specify a data source for it. Click the downward triangle next to it and select one. It will automatically detect the existing adomdnetdataprovider instance on the page.

After setting the attributes of the above two controls, we can browse the multi-dimensional dataset on the web, such:

By default, it will automatically set a dimension and a measurement value. This may not be satisfactory. We can drag other dimensions and measurement values and switch to the grid view, you can also switch between different pivoting methods, such:

The categories in this control is a bit equivalent to on rows in mdx, series is equivalent to on columns, and filter/silcer is equivalent to where.

I previously suggested that you use Microsoft's official example multi-dimensional dataset, mainly because it basically contains all the elements and functions under the Microsoft multi-dimensional dataset, with this, we can evaluate the functions of a third-party display control.

At this point, our multi-dimensional data sets are presented to us in the form of web.

 

FAQs:

You can view the multi-dimensional dataset normally in vs but cannot view it after it is published to IIS. This is because of the security settings, You need to configure according to your own situation. However, if you are experimenting on your own machine, you can try the following two quick methods:

1-Add the highest everyone permission to a multi-dimensional dataset

2-simulate the Asp.net application as administrator in IIS

The preceding two methods are only available in the development and testing environments. Do not use them in the production environment. assign proper permissions to the production environment.

 

Control rating

Dundas supports drill up and drill down, but does not support drillthrought to detail. The author's understanding is not necessarily a defect of Dundas, because detail data may be derived from multi-dimensional data sets based on the data volume and aggregation complexity, it may also be an SQL query to the data warehouse, which depends on your needs. Therefore, it is understandable that Dundas is not added. Bi applications are complex and have no unified standards. Therefore, you need to make a full assessment on whether the current project is suitable for any controls.

Dundas OLAP is a set of pure Asp.net server control, so it is inevitable to run slowly, and even get stuck. I have analyzed the bottleneck, in the analysis services layer, the MDX response speed is usually within 1000 milliseconds, but it is very costly to render it. Here, I suggest you improve the structure of your multi-dimensional data set, because what is your multi-dimensional data set displayed, therefore, this problem should also be taken into account during the design. Otherwise, I am afraid that all the display controls will be discarded. This is also true in management studio.

For better presentation of multi-dimensional data sets, please refer to the aspnetx suggestions. I have made some notes:

Http://www.cnblogs.com/aspnetx/archive/2008/11/22/1338968.html

 

Summary:

This article describes the use of Dundas OLAP controls, issues that need to be paid attention to during development, and some experience of the author in the development process. There were a lot of friends who asked for help on Chinese tutorials online, but there were few resources. I hope that this article will help more people use this control and make better use of multidimensional datasets.

 

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