Specifications and Limits

Analysis Services

Analysis Services

Specifications and Limits

This topic contains information about supported relational database management systems, object specifications, and source column data types in OLE DB.

Supported Relational Database Products

Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Analysis Services supports the following relational database products as data sources:

  • SQL Server versions 6.5 and later

  • Microsoft Access 97 and later

  • Oracle versions 7.3 and 8.0

    Note  Text columns in Oracle tables should be variable length column type when using the OLE DB Provider for Oracle. Use the OLE DB for Provider for ODBC if Oracle tables contain text columns of fixed length column type.

Specifications

The following specifications apply to Analysis Services.

Item Specification
Dimensions in a database 65,535 maximum, regardless of the number of cubes or whether dimensions are shared or private
Levels in a database 65,535 maximum
Cubes in a virtual cube 64 maximum
Measures in a cube 1,024 maximum
Measures in a virtual cube 2,048 maximum
Dimensions in a cube 128 maximum
Levels in a cube 256 maximum
Levels in a dimension 64 maximum
Members in a dimension 2^31-1 = 2,147,483,647 maximum
Members in a parent 64,000 maximum
Calculated members (server defined) in a cube 65,535 maximum
Calculated members in a parent measure in session context 31,743 maximum
Calculated members in a parent measure in query context 31,743 maximum
Calculated members in a parent dimension member in session context 759 maximum
Calculated members in a parent dimension member in query context 759 maximum
Aggregations per partition 65,535 maximum
Cells returned by a query 2^31-1 = 2,147,483,647 cells maximum

Although cubes can be larger than this limit, a query that requests more than 2^31-1 cells from a cube will fail.

Record size for source database table 64 kilobytes (KB) maximum
Length of object name (except dimension name) 50 characters maximum when using Analysis Manager

24 characters maximum when using PivotTable® Service

Length of dimension name 24 characters maximum
Length of aggregation prefix 50 characters maximum
Maximum number of distinct states in a data mining model attribute column 255, after which the column becomes MODEL_EXISTENCE_ONLY

For more information, see Data Mining Columns


Note  The term character in this documentation refers to a UNICODE character.

Source Column Data Types

The data type of the source column for a measure must be numeric except when the Count or Distinct Count aggregate function is used.

The data type of the source column for a dimension level must be string or numeric (except currency).

OLE DB Data Types

Columns of the following OLE DB data types may be used as measures or dimension levels. Columns types that are marked with an asterisk are supported data types for data mining model columns.

  • DBTYPE_BOOL*

  • DBTYPE_I1

  • DBTYPE_I2

  • DBTYPE_I4*

  • DBTYPE_UI1

  • DBTYPE_UI2

  • DBTYPE_UI4

  • DBTYPE_I8

  • DBTYPE_UI8

  • DBTYPE_R4

  • DBTYPE_R8* (Note: Data mining model column inputs of this type will be cast to a 4 byte floating point number)

  • DBTYPE_DECIMAL

  • DBTYPE_NUMERIC

  • DBTYPE_VARNUMERIC

  • DBTYPE_CY

  • DBTYPE_DATE*

  • DBTYPE_DBDATE

  • DBTYPE_DBTIME

  • DBTYPE_DBTIMESTAMP

Columns of the following OLE DB data types may be used as measures only if the Count or Distinct Count aggregate function is used. These data types may be used as dimension levels.

  • DBTYPE_BYTES

  • DBTYPE_HCHAPTER*

  • DBTYPE_STR

  • DBTYPE_WSTR*
External Limitations

Limitations imposed by other technologies, such as the RDBMS being used, may limit some features of Analysis Services. For example, when merging two partitions containing a large number (> 100) of aggregations, you may receive an error message indicating that the maximum number of ODBC Access 97 File Sharing lock counts has been exceeded. This number is controlled by the Access 97 MaxLocksPerFile registry entry, not by any configuration parameter in Analysis Services.

Other such external limitations may apply as well.