About Scheduling Cubes for Processing

An Analysis Services cube is a combination of measures and dimensions that together determine how a set of data can be viewed and analyzed. A cube is a static object and initially represents the data that existed in Analysis Services for the selected measures and dimensions when the cube was created. To keep a cube current, it must be processed regularly, whereby the cube is updated with the most current data in Analysis Services.

To make sure that a cube always provides users with the most current data, you should schedule it for processing regularly, usually on a daily basis. One way to process cubes and shared dimensions successfully is to do so manually on the Analysis Server. Using this method, you can process shared dimensions first, and then process the related cubes. Processing cubes manually, however, is not a viable option if you have many cubes that you want to process on a daily basis.

Instead, a preferable option would be to schedule cubes for processing using Data Transformation Services (DTS). This functionality is available in the SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio, which is included in SQL Server Standard Edition. For details on creating a DTS package that can be used to process objects according to a custom schedule, see your SQL Server documentation.