OK, I've been running up against a number of annoyances with Analysis Services, Reporting Services, and Integration Services. These are not show stoppers, but annoying non-the-less.
1. Colors coming from the cube (cell property back_color is a good example), through adomd.net come in the following format: BGR. Not RGB like every other programming system known to man, but with the Red and Blue swapped for no apparent reason.
Here is my conversion code:
uint iColor = (uint)prop.Value;
int i = (int) iColor;
Color c = Color.FromArgb( i);
backColor = Color.FromArgb(c.B, c.G, c.R);
2. When building a cube, and you happen to need another column in a fact/dim table. So you add the column to the table, then go back to the DSV (Data Source View) and -- where is my column?! While the editor gives you no indication that anything is missing. You can either: Refresh ever table in the DSV, or convert the table to a Named Query, then replace the Named Query with the original table. Aint that one fun.
3. Reporting Services. You can only have Measures on the Columns. BTW: nothing but Measures can go on the columns. I understand the reasoning, but really freaking annoying.
4. Integration Services. You can debug scripting tasks -- unless your scripting task is in a data flow. Then not so much.
5. Reporting Services. If you rebuild a cube while creating/editing a report, you have to close the report creation tab and reopen it to continue editing the report. If you don't, Reporting Services will complain and send you warning messages galore until you do.
6. Reporting Services. On the Data tab is a drop-down called "Dataset:". When you move to the Data tab, this drop-down is selected by default. So now, regardless of where your mouse is (say, over the MDX/SQL script I've been writing), when you use the scroll-wheel the items start to scroll through. This is compounded by the fact that it takes the Data tab 2-3 seconds to initialize a dataset...now it is doing that for however many datasets you have in your list (about 10 for me). I really want to slap whomever made that decision. Hard.
7. Reporting Services. In a standard MDX query, adding a parameter to an existing query can break the entire report. No problem, remove the parameter and re-add it. Oh, you were writing custom MDX for your query instead of using our (brain-dead) editor. Well, you are on your own. Good luck with that one and let me know how it goes.
