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Non printable Character Data in Cube

  • May 15, 2012 at 3:17 am

    #258264

    Hi,

    We have a cube that processes fine, even though we have some data that contains non printable characters (non synchronous idle).

    However, when we use the column in an MDX query, it dies.

    Is there a way to get SSAS to ignore the presence of these characters?

    Cleaning them out of the data is very much a last resort as it will affect things further down the line.

    Any ideas gratefully received.

    Thanks,

    Mark.

  • May 15, 2012 at 8:00 am

    #1487708

    I think the answer is to remove the non-printable characters from the underlying data in the DW and reprocess. Is there a reason why you want to preserve these characters?

    I tried to do a search and found:

    http://biscoop.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/solving-mdx-query-error-%E2%80%9Cthe-server-sent-an-unrecognizable-response%E2%80%9D/

    HTH,

    Rob

  • May 15, 2012 at 8:14 am

    #1487727

    Hi,

    Firstly, thanks for the response;

    Yes, we potentially need to keep the control chars in there. The data comes from another system, that also spits data out to other places before its reunited, and it all needs to match up when it comes back from the different sources :-S

    Its a pain, but i dont think cleaning the data is going to be possible in this case.

    Cheers,

    Mark.

  • May 15, 2012 at 8:18 am

    #1487733

    Yes, we potentially need to keep the control chars in there. The data comes from another system, that also spits data out to other places before its reunited, and it all needs to match up when it comes back from the different sources :-S

    Are you implying that these control characters are some sort of key value and you can't match your data without them?

  • May 15, 2012 at 8:24 am

    #1487743

    im saying that the other system that we interact with uses this as part of the key

  • May 15, 2012 at 12:41 pm

    #1487949

    evolution_mark (5/15/2012)

    im saying that the other system that we interact with uses this as part of the key

    So your source system's natural/business keys contain non-printable (e.g. ASCII character(0)) characters. Hmmm. That's a new one to me.

    In your DW DimCustomer table (assuming Customer is the dimenstion) could you do something like having two separate business key columns Customer_BK and Customer_Clean_BK. The Customer_BK could contain the non-printable characters straight from the source system and be used to link to the source data (if necessary). The Customer_Clean_BK field would have the non-printable columns stripped out. Then just bring the Customer_Clean_BK into your SSAS cube dimension. The end users shouldn't notice any difference.

    That might do the trick with little change to your current setup.

    HTH,

    Rob

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