PRB: Error 206 While Processing a Large Cube

• Microsoft SQL Server OLAP Services version 7.0

SYMPTOMS

You may encounter error 206 after about an hour of processing a cube when the cube has huge dimensions and fact table. This can also happen with reasonably small dimensions and fact table if the design of relational schema is not optimized. The following is error 206:

Error (206): Process operation failed.

CAUSE

This problem occurs because Decision Support Objects (DSOs) have a command timeout set to one hour by default. If it takes more than an hour to get the first row back from the source data, the processing will time out.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, do the following:

1. Check to make sure your star schema design is optimized properly. For additional information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   Q199132 INF: OLAP: How to Index Star/Snowflake Schema Data




2. Increase the default command timeout setting. There is no exposed dialog box in OLAP Manager to change the command timeout value; however, you can change it from DSO code. The following is the sample Visual Basic code do accomplish this:

   
   Dim dsoServer As new DSO.Server
   
   ' put the name of your server
   dsoServer.Connect "server_name"
   
   ' default is 3600, it is in seconds - 1hr, change it to 10000 secs., for example.
   dsoServer.Timeout = 10000
   
   dsoServer.Update
   dsoServer.CloseServer 

   NOTE: After you run the above code, the new timeout value is persistent and will be used until you change it again.

Additional query words:

Keywords : SSOSdso SSOSmgr
Version : winnt:7.0
Platform : winnt
Issue type : kbprb