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Managing PAS Content from
Development to Production
Environments
Version 1.0
Custom Security
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Overview
Content Management is a critical issue when working with ProClarity Analytics Server (PAS). Briefing Books are
created to contain one or more views. It is often a requirement to create these books and views in a development
environment. The books and views can then be migrated to production. The separation between your development
and production books can be either done on a single PAS Server or with two PAS Servers. In a single PAS Server
scenario the separation between development and production is done by having multiple briefing books and controlling
the security that is set on the books. While this does allow for separation of content it does not physically isolate the
development from the production server. So if development content or processes cause the server to hang it affects all
content. Due to this risk, it is often necessary to have separate PAS Servers for development and production. The two
server scenario will be the focus of this paper.
When there is both a development and production PAS server, special consideration should be given to the process of
migrating from one environment to the other. In determining the best mechanism for migrating content between the
production and development servers you first need to determine whether both servers will be getting content from the
same Analysis Services server. It is important to note that when the PAS content in development is built from one cube
server and the production PAS content should be pointing to a differentcube server you are required to change the
connection information after you migrate. This is due to the fact that your view stores the server and cube that should
be used for the connection. This process will be discussed in detail later in this document. If both your development
PAS Server and Production PAS Server connect to the same cube server you will not need to change the connection
information as the view will have accurate connection information already.
PAS supports three primary mechanisms for migrating content from the development server to the production server
they are as follows:
 Re-Publishing the book from Development to Production
 Backup the PAS database on the development server and restore the database to production
 Use SQL Server replication to synchronize the content between the development and production servers.
This paper will outline each of these items and address the mechanisms for implementing each and the advantages
and disadvantages of each of the choices. After each of these options is addressed the paper will then outline the
steps to update your connection information. Finally it is possible to store data other than PAS Briefing Books in the
PAS repository. While, this is not common, if you have chosen to implement this feature you will have some additional
considerations. These additional considerations will be outlined at the end of the paper.
Note- It is important to note that you could write a DTS or SSIS package to migrate the contect from the
development database to the production database as well. ProClarity does not ship the SQL or Stored Procedures
necessary to do this and therefore it is not presented as an option in this paper. With the requisite knowledge of the
database it would certainly be a valid option.
Re-Publishing the Book
The first option for moving content from development to production requires the process of opening the book and
republishing it to the production environement. You can use the following steps to perform the migration using PDP or
Web Professional.
1. Open ProClarity Desktop Professional or ProClarity Web Professional (Web Professional shown below).
From the File Menu item Click Analytics Server and Select Retrieve book. Open the development book that
you want to publish to the production server (Note: if the server that is open in the Retrieve Book dialog is not
the development server you must change the server using the Change Server button on the far right).
Figure 1.1
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2. Once the book is opened, Click the Analytics Server button drop-down and Select Publish Book As… (This
option can also be accessed from the File Menu Item).
Figure 1.2
3. From the Publish Book dialog you will need to change the server using the Change Server button. You must
have access to the production server to publish to it. Choose or type in the production sever address to
change to and Click OK.
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Figure 1.3
4. Click OK on the Publish book dialog to publish the book to the production server.
Each of the options for content management has a series of advantages and disadvantages which need to be
evaluated before making the appropriate choice for your environment.
The re-publish option for migration has the following advantages:


Easy to perform. Users that are familiar with publishing books will easily be able to perform this function.
Available from the ProClarity tool set. There are no additional requirements from SQL Server so this can be
performed without having access to the SQL Server tool set.
The re-publish option for migration also has the following disadvantages:


The user performing the republish has to have publishing rights on the production server (this is certainly a
security advantage but may cause additional configuration overhead).
When the book is re-published to the new server is receives a different unique identifier. So consequently
security will have to be configured for the book.
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Backup and Restore Option
With the backup and restore option you are working with the PAS database in SQL Server. This process takes the
development copy of the database and performs a SQL Server backup. The database is then restored to the
production server. To perform the backup and restore process you can perform the following list of steps:
1. Open SQL Server Enterprise Manager and browse to your Development PAS database. Right-click on the
PAS database and choose Backup Database… as shown in Figure 2.1.
Figure 2.1
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2. From the SQL Server Backup dialog box you’ll need to provide a name for the backup and a location (file) to
backup to. You can Click Add… to type in a new file name here or search for a file that already exists, as
shown in Figure 2.2. The othe properties could be applicable depending on your backup strategy. You should
refer to the SQL Server Books Online to gain more information on each of the available settings. Click Ok to
begin the backup.
Figure 2.2
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3. Next you’ll need to restore the PAS development database to the Production PAS server. With Enterprise
Manager still open browse the Production server, Right-Click on the PAS database (the default name for the
PAS database is ProClarity_PAS), and this time Click All-tasks and Select Restore Database…
Figure 2.3
4. From this dialog you will need to choose the From Device radial button and click on Select Devices... to
browse to the file to use for your restore procedure. On the Select Devices dialog, click the Add Device button
to type in or browse to the file that you just created using the backup procedure. Click OK until the backup
begins.
Note -In many cases the development and production servers have different setup configurations. It may be
necessary to use additional Restore options to ensure the files restore properly. A common example of this is the file
locations. SQL Server will try to restore the .MDF and .LDF files to the same path in the operating system that they
were backed up from. You may need to modify the file locations to ensure they are restored to the operating system
path you want. For more details about each of the restore options you can refer to the SQL Server Books Online.
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The backup process can be automated using the SQL Server Agent. Preferrably this would be done at set times
throughout the day or week to bypass the need to come in and perform this process at every publishing change.
The backup and restore option has several advantages and these are listed as follows:



This will migrate all of the books rather than one at a time.
The unique identifiers are the same and therefore security may not need to be reconfigured.
Backups are probably part of a normal strategy that is in place within the company and therefore it should
be easy to work with. In most cases organizations have a DBA or several that are very familiar with the
process already.
The backup and restore option also comes with the following disadvantages


This process, as presented here, is an all or nothing process. To get just changes you will need to
configure both full backups and manage transaction log backups.
This does require the SQL Server DBA involvement. The SQL Server tools are needed. (this may not be
a disadvantage but it may be for organizations where the SQL Server DBAs are not real familiar with the
ProClarity products.)
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SQL Server Replication
The final option for managing content is to use SQL Server Replication. Through SQL Server replication you can
configure a relationship between the two databases so that content is automatically transferred from one database to
the other. In this case, the development database is synchronized with production as changes are made. While there
are a series of replication types available we strongly urge you to consider transactional replication. There are actually
three types of replication available in SQL Server; Snapshot, Transactional, and Merge. Snapshot replication takes all
the data and snapshots them to the other server. Transactional replication looks for modifications in the transaction log
of one server and replicates those modifications to the other server. Merge replication, while it works, makes a series
of modifications to the schema of the database and this could cause a problem with later versions of the ProClarity
products. Transactional replication is change only and performs the least amount of intrusiveness to the ProClarity
Database. For these reasons it is generally better to choose Transactional replication.
The configuration of SQL Server replication is a little more involved than performing a backup of the database. We
suggest your refer to the SQL Server Books Online or other resources you have on SQL Server to perform this
configuration. We also suggest you consult with your database administrators to determine the best way to implement
a replication strategy.
Replication has the following advantages:



The replication process is fully automated and you can easily schedule the interval at which changes are
synchronized.
Transactional replication is change only so the process is fast and only moves the records that need to be
moved.
The unique identifiers are not changed between the servers and therefore security may not need to be
reconfigured.
Replication also has the following disadvantages


It is much more involved in SQL Server and therefore requires more database administration and design up
front.
Replication is not accessible from the ProClarity tool set
1.
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Changing Connection Information
We discussed the need to change the PAS content’s connection information if the production content needs to point to
a different cube server than the development content. If this is your scenario you will need to perform the following
steps regardless of which of the three mechanisms you have chosen to migrate the content. The view stores the
connection information and if the view needs to point to a different server and or cube you will need to change the
connection information. Perform the following steps in the ProClarity Analystics Server Administration Tool to change
the connection information after you have migrated your PAS content.
1. Open the Analytics Server Administration Tool and browse the production server to the library for which you
want to change the connection information. (Note: the same procedure can be followed to change connection
information at the book level; however, changing connection information at the library level will propagate the
change to all books in the library.) Right-click the library in the right view pane and Select Update Connection
Information… as shown below. The Update Library Connection Information window will appear.
Figure 4.1
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2. From the Update Library Connection Information window you can modify the connection information by using
the search and replace mechanism. Most searches use the server name, the catalog (cube database) and
the cube name. The drop-down boxes are pre-filled; however, you may need to type in your connection
information when it’s not available. In the Find Pages With column choose or type the development server
name in the server name drop-down, the development cube database name in the catalog drop-down and the
cube name in the cube drop-down. Then on the Replace Value With column choose or type the production
server name in the server name drop-down, the production cube database name in the catalog drop-down and
the production cube name in the cube drop-down. Then click Apply and OK to apply the changes and close
the dialog.
Figure 4.2
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Managing PASUploads
Non-briefing book files and software components that are published to the Analytics server are not stored in the PAS
database. These files are stored in the virtual direction called PASUploads that is created during PAS installation. By
default the virtual direction is installed to <C>:\Inetpub\wwwroot\PAS\PASUploads. PAS stores a pointer to these files
in the briefing book which contains them. If the briefing book is moved the pointer needs to remain valid. You must
make the PASUploads path the same on the development PAS server as the Production PAS server in order to avoid
an invalid path to the non-briefing book page. (Note: Information on creating and Managing PAS virtual directories can
be found in the Analytics Server Administrator’s Guide.)
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Summary
There are three mechanisms to manage your content from development to production. You can republish the book,
backup and restore the database, or use SQL Server replication. Each of these options and advantages and
disadvantages and you will need to discuss as an organization the option that best fits your environment. In addition
to the content management connection information may be an issue. For those of you that have your development
books connecting to a different cube server than your production books you will have to change the connection
information as well.
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