Error Handling for Dimension Attribute Loads

If your business needs require more granular control over error handling, you can set several properties in the SSAS dimension editor, at the dimension level. First, let's consider what types of errors could occur. These could include loading nulls, loading mismatched (to the rows in the fact table) key values, and loading duplicate key values. You should capture desired error-handling behavior for each dimension during the requirements gathering phase of your BI project.

The first consideration when implementing those requirements is whether you'll need to include a custom error configuration. If you set the ErrorConfiguration property to (custom), several properties become available for you to configure in BIDS via the dimension property sheet. These properties are shown in Figure 5–15; all the values are the defaults, with the exception of the KeyErrorAction property value, which we have changed from the default value of ConvertToUnknown to the optional value of DiscardRecord for this example.