CREATE SESSION CUBE command by Excel Grouping creates a shadow copy on the server disk - storage running out of memory

Question

Dear all.

If you done grouping in excel the client creates a session cube with the following MDX.

CREATE SESSION CUBE [<Cubename>_XL_GROUPING1]....

This session cube will be created physically on the disk. So the report is very complex it runs into the problem that for e.g. 8 sheets 8 shadow copies on the server disk are created and the SSAS database became forth time larger. Our cube has a size of 170 Gybte. After a while the server is running out of resources, so how can we restrict or disable this behavior?

Before this issue I thought SSAS will read only from the DATA folder and writes only to disk during processing. But actually this is not the case.

Cheers,

Nils

Answer 1

Hi Nils,

Thank you for your question. 

I am trying to involve someone more familiar with this topic for a further look at this issue. Sometime delay might be expected from the job transferring. Your patience is greatly appreciated. 

Thank you for your understanding and support.

Regards,

---

Charlie Liao
TechNet Community Support

Answer 2

Hi.

I added this also to connect including an example in Adventure Works.

https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/822778/excel-grouping-create-session-cube-breaks-ssas-envirounment-because-of-phyically-copy-the-cube-data-for-every-pivot-table

Cheers,

Nils

Answer 3

Hi, Nils

This feature will be evaluated in the new version of SQL Server. So currently in this version, there will be no enhancement or change.

Thanks.