Forum Discussion
Access contradiction
I have all my reports consuming live from a SSAS server, the setup works amazingly!
Now; I see a bit of contradiction in the way access is managed...
I see these different access options:
Good, because I only only want to give "summarized data" access...
But, now, let's say...
I grant BUILD access to a user -> then the user shall be able to hit the 'analyze in excel' button.
But if the user Analyzes in excel , he/she should be able to hit the 'connection properties' in excel and see the Cube name. Then he/she can open a new excel use the cube name, connect there and circumvent the "data with current layout" restriction.
Is this Cubes 'bypass' known?
yes, it's been an open secret for long. Wait until your users discover that they can apply cube functions to every single cell in their Excel sheet. We once had a user who created 10000 cube connections from a single Excel file. Needless to say, that crashed the capacity, hard.
Nowadays our Power Users have completely abandoned Analyze in Excel in favor of DAX queries (aka "Excel with Live connection"). Much more limited, but also much faster.
2 Replies
Hi Anonymous - I think you are comparing chalk and cheese.
The "Export Data" is limited functionality that is applied to each Visual on a report page. You can control level of data Viewer can export from the visual to Excel or CSV.
When you provide "Build" you are granting form read access to the Semantic Model (the cube), which allows someone to build their own reports or Excel Pivot Tables. Note they cannot change the Semantic Model. There people will have the ability to see the whole Semantic Model (including hidden items).yes, it's been an open secret for long. Wait until your users discover that they can apply cube functions to every single cell in their Excel sheet. We once had a user who created 10000 cube connections from a single Excel file. Needless to say, that crashed the capacity, hard.
Nowadays our Power Users have completely abandoned Analyze in Excel in favor of DAX queries (aka "Excel with Live connection"). Much more limited, but also much faster.