I have a very pressing issue about full processing of a dimension attribute whose assstore is approaching 4GB limit on SQL Server 2008 R2 Analysis Services.
The error read as follows:
File system error: A FileStore error from WriteFile occurred. Physical file: \?\H:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSAS10_50.BISQL\OLAP\Data\GL_UAT.0.db\GL Misc.0.dim*6.Gl Idx.asstore*. Logical file: . . Errors in the OLAP storage engine: An error occurred while the 'Gl Idx' attribute of the 'GL Misc' dimension from the 'GL_UAT' database was being processed.
The "Gl Idx.asstore" file is found approaching 4GB limit.
Upon inspecting the attribute in question, we found that (refer to the screen shot below):
The property page of the attribute in question
The attribute's KeyColumn property and its NameColumn property are the same, except that the datatype of the NameColumn property is WChar, whereas KeyColumn data type (the underlying data type) is Int64.
Obviously the NameColumn property is not needed here, so we set the property off, i.e. set it to "(none)", save the changes and the processing the dimension containing this attribute again. We thought that by clearing the NameColumn property, there should no longer have any asstore file at all.
The result: Still the same error. The same asstore file was still being generated!! This has raised my eyebrows. Any further help on solving this asstore 4GB limit issue is much appreciated.