Managing the Data Warehouse and Analysis Services Cube

You can manage the warehouse and SQL Server Analysis Services cube for Team Foundation to address the following scenarios:

  • Resolve a problem with reports that are not up to date or contain missing data.

  • Process the warehouse or cube after you resolve schema conflicts that occurred in the warehouse.

  • Change the refresh frequency for processing the warehouse or cube.

  • Troubleshoot errors that appear in the event viewer for an application-tier server that are related to warehouse processing jobs.

  • Rebuild the warehouse and cube after you move, restore, rename, or fail over the data-tier server for Team Foundation. 

You use the Warehouse Control Web Service to perform several of these tasks. To use this service, your Administer warehouse permission for the team project collection must be set to Allow. You can set this permission in Team Explorer or in the Team Foundation Administration Console. For more information, see Set Administrator Permissions for Team Project Collections.

Note

All reportable data from all team projects that are defined in all project collections for a deployment of Visual Studio Team Foundation Server is written to a single relational database (Tfs_Warehouse). Data from that warehouse is then processed and written to the Analysis Services cube (Tfs_Analysis). Collecting data into a single data warehouse supports reporting across team projects and project collections.

Common Tasks

Task

Related topics

Grant or remove permissions to access the cube. You must add team members to the TFSWarehouseDataReader role for them to be able to view, refresh, or create Excel reports that access data in the cube. A user who has permission to view the data in the warehouse for a particular team project has full access to all the data for that project.

Grant Team Members Access to the Analysis Services Cube

Update the data warehouse or cube on demand. To resolve a problem with reports that do not update or that contain missing data, you may have to process the data warehouse manually. You can use the Warehouse Control Web service to update the data warehouse on demand.

Manually Process the Data Warehouse and Analysis Services Cube for Team Foundation Server

Modify the refresh frequency of the data warehouse or cube. The default properties for the warehouse are set when Team Foundation Server is installed, but you can later change the default values to respond to changing requirements. Two properties that you might want to change are the frequency with which the data is updated in the data warehouse and the security settings that control user access to the data warehouse.

Change a Process Control Setting for the Data Warehouse or Analysis Services Cube

Re-create the schemas, and rebuild the data warehouse databases. To access high-level reports, you must rebuild the data warehouse whenever you move, restore, rename, or fail over the data-tier server for Team Foundation.

Rebuild the Data Warehouse and Analysis Services Cube

Review the default assignments of settings that control processing of the data warehouse. Updating the data warehouse can be a resource-intensive process. Depending on your deployment requirements, you may want to fine-tune the settings that control the processing of the data warehouse.

Settings That Control Processing of the Data Warehouse and Analysis Services Cube

Task

Related topics

Define reports that support your project tracking requirements. Depending on the process template that you use to create your team project, you may have several reports already defined. You can customize these reports additionally or create new reports. These reports may contain new data fields that you added to work item types.

Creating, Customizing, and Managing Reports for Visual Studio ALM

Understand the flow of data from the operational stores to the data warehouse. The Team Foundation reporting warehouse is a traditional data warehouse that consists of a relational database and an Analysis Services database.

Components of the Data Warehouse for Team Foundation

Understand the relationships and dependencies for SQL Server and Team Foundation Server. You can manage Team Foundation Server more easily if you understand SQL Server and SQL Server Reporting Services, and how they both interact with Team Foundation Server. If your deployment also uses SharePoint Products, you must also manage the dependencies between SharePoint Products and Reporting Services.

Understanding SQL Server and SQL Server Reporting Services

Correct errors that block processing of the data warehouse. Schema conflicts occur when a set of attributes for reportable fields differs across team project collections. Schema conflicts block updated data from being moved into the warehouse and the cube. You must correct all schema conflicts to unblock processing and to update reports with current data.

Resolving Schema Conflicts That Are Occurring in the Data Warehouse

Add new fields, or modify reporting attributes of existing fields. You use work item fields to track data for a work item type, to define the filter criteria for queries, and to design reports. To support reporting, you can add fields or change the attributes of existing fields. When you add or modify fields, you will want to apply systematic naming conventions to make sure that data is logically grouped into folders in the cube.

Adding and Modifying Work Item Fields to Support Reporting

Add and manage a reporting resource. You can enable and disable data that flows into the data warehouse by editing the reporting configuration for your team project collections. After you add a report server to your deployment, you can configure reporting resources for your team project collections and the projects in those collections.

Modify a Team Project Collection

Add a Report Server to Your Deployment

See Also

Concepts

Components of the Data Warehouse for Team Foundation

SQL Server and Team Foundation Server

Creating, Customizing, and Managing Reports for Visual Studio ALM