Grant Holliday

Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server (TFS) uses SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services to generate graphs showing various metrics of team projects. TFS stores lots of data on Work Items, Version Control and Builds.

This data is pooled into a SQL Analysis Services database (TfsWarehouse) and then into an OLAP cube. There is a windows service (TfsServerScheduler) which initiaties the processing of the warehouse. The reports and then rendered by querying the cube.

If you create a new team project and then try to view the reports, you will find that none of the reports work until the warehouse processing has completed. By default, it runs every hour.

When viewing the report within Visual Studio, the “Iteration” field will be blank and when you select [View Report] you receive the error message: “Please select a value for the parameter ‘Iteration’.”

If you view the sharepoint project portal, the web part will display the following error: “This report requires a default or user-defined value for the report parameter ‘IterationParam’… (rsReportParameterValueNotSet)”

These errors are caused because the processing of the warehouse has not completed since the project was created. So, to view your graphs you can either wait an hour for the TfsServerScheduler to kick-off the processing, or force it yourself.

Using SQL Management Studio to force processing

The advantage of using the SQLMS to force processing, is that it shows the progress of the update.

Run SQL Management Studio. Change the “Server type” to “Analysis Services” and type the server name of your Data Tier server.

Once you are connected, expand the Databases node, then right-click the TFSWarehouse database and select “Process”.

Select [OK] on the “Process Warehouse – TFSWarehouse” dialog.

The processing progress dialog is then displayed.

Once the processing is complete, you should then be able to refresh the sharepoint project portal or the report within Visual Studio to display your reports.

Using TFS Web Services to force processing

It’s also possible to force the update using the TFS Web Services. Open a browser and browse to:

http://localhost:8080/Warehouse/v1.0/WarehouseController.asmx
Select the “Run” method, then select [Invoke].

You will receive a boolean XML reponse, it indicates whether processing was successfully started in the background. It should be “true”.

You can monitor the progress of the processing using another web service call.

Select the “GetWarehouseStatus” method, then select [Invoke]

You will receive a WarehouseStatus XML reponse which will say “Idle” or “ProcessingOlap”. Keep refreshing this web method and when it returns back to “Idle”, your data warehouse processing should be complete. Your reports will be available.