I was tempted to start this post by this sentence “Analysis Services 2008 is not a new full release of SSAS” but as you can see, I resisted to it! :)
Ok, it’s a joke. However, how do you interpret the answer “In the next full release of SSAS” when I asked “Does it mean [the fix for the Excel 2007 calculated members selection issue will be solved] ‘in Office 14’, ‘in SSAS 2008’, ‘in Office 2007 SP1’ or ‘in SSAS 2005 SP3’?” (see this item on Connect for further details).
In 2007 (more than one year ago) I assumed that the answer corresponded to the ‘in SSAS 2008’ choice, but now I understand why the answer was slightly different…
Today I retried the calculated members issue I described in a previous post. Long story short: you cannot select individual calculated members on non-measure dimensions when the serve is SSAS 2005 SP2 or later build. Today I tested this behavior with SSAS 2008 and it still produce the same issue with Excel 2007. The reason I didn’t tested this issue before is that I prefer to use my DateTool solution, which is much more flexible and compatible than the one based on calculated members. But the issue is still there if you want to use calculated members for other reasons.
So, what will be the “next full release of SSAS”? I hope to read an answer from a blue-badge :-)
UPDATE: A member of the SSAS team answered in the comments – no good news, but at least I appreciate the transparency!
UPDATE February 20, 2010: SQL Server 2008 R2 and Excel 2010 have solved the issue – you need both. Chris Webb posted a description of the fix.