Date dimension has stopped processing in OLAP cube

Question

Little bit of background, we have an OLAP system that has been happily processing it's cube for a customer for a long time. Then recently it started to fail. This has coincided with the main developer accidentally getting married and making himself unavailable. So obviously I can't go pestering him.

We have a date dimension that works at Year, Month, Day level. We have thow hierarchies for calendar and fiscal years.

It's currently throwing a message that I find pretty indecipherable (not being an OLAP dev) and the examples I've read online refer to it being caused by weeks splitting across months, which is not a problem I have. The message is:

Rigid relationships between attributes cannot be changed during incremental processing of a dimension.

When I reprocess the cube I now get problems related to dates. When I reprocess the Date dimension I get the following:

Internal error: The operation terminated unsuccessfully.
Errors in the OLAP storage engine: Rigid relationships between attributes cannot be changed during incremental processing of a dimension.
Errors in the OLAP storage engine: An error occurred while the 'Date ID' attribute of the 'Date' dimension from the 'TMC_CUBE_TESCO' database was being processed.
Errors in the OLAP storage engine: The process operation ended because the number of errors encountered during processing reached the defined limit of allowable errors for the operation.
Server: The operation has been cancelled.

When I view the entire detail for the Date Dimension I see that it has processed a heap of SELECT statements but falls down here:

SELECT DISTINCT [dbo_dw_DIMdate].[DateTime] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateDateTime0_0],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[DayOfMonth] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateDayOfMonth0_1],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[MonthNumberCalendar] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateMonthNumberCalendar0_2],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[YearCalendar] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateYearCalendar0_3]
FROM [dbo].[dw_DIMdate] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdate]
Processing Dimension Attribute 'Date ID' failed. 1 rows have been read.
Start time: 10/21/2011 10:30:35 PM; End time: 10/21/2011 10:30:35 PM; Duration: 0:00:00
SQL queries 1

SELECT DISTINCT [dbo_dw_DIMdate].[DateID] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateDateID0_0],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[DayOfCalendarYear] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateDayOfCalendarYear0_1],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[DayOfFiscalYear] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateDayOfFiscalYear0_2],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[DayOfWeek] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateDayOfWeek0_3],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[IsCalendarYearToDate] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateIsCalendarYearToDate0_4],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[IsFiscalYearToDate] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateIsFiscalYearToDate0_5],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[IsLastCalendarMonth] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateIsLastCalendarMonth0_6],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[IsLastWeek] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateIsLastWeek0_7],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[IsWeekDay] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateIsWeekDay0_8],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[IsYesterday] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateIsYesterday0_9],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[DateTime] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateDateTime0_10],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[DayOfWeekName_engb] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateDayOfWeekName_engb0_11],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[ShortDayOfWeekName_engb] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateShortDayOfWeekName_engb0_12],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[WeekNumberCalendar] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateWeekNumberCalendar0_13],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[WeekNumberFiscal] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateWeekNumberFiscal0_14],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[WeekCommencing] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateWeekCommencing0_15],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[YearFiscal] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateYearFiscal0_16],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[YearCalendar] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateYearCalendar0_17],[dbo_dw_DIMdate].[IsLastCalendarWeek] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdateIsLastCalendarWeek0_18]
FROM [dbo].[dw_DIMdate] AS [dbo_dw_DIMdate]
Error Messages 1

I'm not after "sent me teh codez", but any help understanding the error message and problem would be very much appreciated.

Answer 1

You should process your DB in full mode, not incremental (if size of DB is not very big). But it's only one approach. Also, you could have problems with your dictionary (source table for your dimension). Use the query from process window - try to obtain the same distinct count for attribute Id and attribute Name fields.