Essbase XML/A Update

Following up on an earlier post, I got SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 installed to test the fix to XML/A and SQL Server Reporting Services. I am happy to report that it works although I did have to recreate the report. I decided to take a quick look to see if I could figure out what was different and I discovered the query was slightly different. The original query was:

SELECT { [COGS], [Sales], [Margin] } ON COLUMNS, {CROSSJOIN( [Market].Levels(1).ALLMEMBERS, [Year].Levels(1).ALLMEMBERS ) } DIMENSION PROPERTIES MEMBER_CAPTION, MEMBER_UNIQUE_NAME, PARENT_UNIQUE_NAME, LEVEL_NUMBER ON ROWS FROM Sample.Basic CELL PROPERTIES VALUE, BACK_COLOR, FORE_COLOR, FORMATTED_VALUE, FORMAT_STRING

The updated query is:

SELECT NON EMPTY { [COGS], [Sales], [Margin] } ON COLUMNS, NON EMPTY {CROSSJOIN( [Market].Levels(1).ALLMEMBERS, [Year].Levels(1).ALLMEMBERS ) } DIMENSION PROPERTIES MEMBER_CAPTION, MEMBER_UNIQUE_NAME ON ROWS FROM Sample.Basic CELL PROPERTIES VALUE, BACK_COLOR, FORE_COLOR, FORMATTED_VALUE, FORMAT_STRING

I highlighted the differences. Once I removed PARENT_UNIQUE_NAME from the dimension properties, the old report ran. I don't know where the NON EMPTY statement comes from except it may be a tweak added by the Microsoft developers to improve the XML/A for Essbase reports. Here is the finished report (from the preview screen in Visual Studio):