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Tracing Mining Model Processing Using AMO

Last updated by DMTeam on Tue 05/02/2006 @ 05:30

This tip shows how to trace and display the progress of mining model processing with AMO

Tracing Mining Model Processing Using AMO

SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services gives you the ability to create and process mining structures and models programmatically in your own .NET application using the AMO object model. Since processing mining models can be time consuming on large data sets, it would be great to show progress information similar to what is displayed by Business Intelligence Development Studio and SQL Server Management Studio.

This article and the accompanying sample app will show you how to use the AMO trace object to obtain progress information and also demonstrate how to display the information in a RichTextBox control.

Add Tracing to Your App

Step 1:

Begin by adding a reference to AMO (\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\SDK\Assemblies\Microsoft.AnalysisServices.DLL) to your application project.

Step 2:

The progress information (for mining model processing) is obtained by tracing the current session.

Assuming that you have defined the AMO Server object and connected to your Analysis Services instance as below:

//Define AMO server object

private Server server = new Server();

//Connect to the server

server.Connect(serverName)

After connecting, server.SessionTrace is set to the session trace object corresponding to the current session.

Step 3:

You can now trace data mining processing and other server activities by defining an event handler as follows:

server.SessionTrace.OnEvent += new TraceEventHandler(EventHandlerForTrace);

Step 4:

Have the trace event handler EventHandlerForTrace add trace messages into a buffer:

//Buffer for trace messasge

private StringBuilder messageBuffer = new StringBuilder();

     //Event handler for tracing
     private void EventHandlerForTrace(object sender, TraceEventArgs e)
     {
         // Update the message buffer
         lock(messageBuffer)
         {
              messageBuffer.Append(string.Format("EventClass: {0}\n", e.EventClass.ToString()));
              messageBuffer.Append(string.Format("EventSubclass: {0}\n", e.EventSubclass.ToString()));
              messageBuffer.Append(e.TextData);
              messageBuffer.Append("\n");

...

}

...

}

Step 5:

Send the buffered messages to the text box with a tick event handler as follows:

private System.Windows.Forms.Timer myTimer = new System.Windows.Forms.Timer();;

myTimer.Tick += new EventHandler(TimerEventProcessor);
myTimer.Interval = 55;

The tick event handler TimerEventProcessor simply update the text box with the latest trace message in the buffer:

     private void TimerEventProcessor(Ojbect myObject, EventArgs myEventArgs)
     {
         lock (messageBuffer)
         {
             if (messageBuffer.Length > 0)
             {
                  richTextBox1.AppendText(messageBuffer.ToString());
                  richTextBox1.Refresh();
                  messageBuffer.Remove(0, messageBuffer.Length);

...

}

...

}

Step 6:

Run mining structure/model processing in a separate thread, so it won't block the main thread.

A Demo App

You can download the source code for a sample app that demonstrates the above ideas here. To use it:

Open the project in Visual Studio and add a reference to AMO as described above.
Build and run the project. The following is a screen shot of the application:

Connect to your server by providing the server name and clicking "Connect to Server".
You can then select the mining model you want to process. Click "Process".
During processing, you can see the progress notifications in the trace message textbox.

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