"Anything else I told you?" I asked,my head still spinning.
"You told me the best thing about history snapshots is that they save both the report layout and a copy of the data at the time the snapshot is created. I don't have to save old versions of the data or the report layout. It's all done for me in the history snapshot."
"Just one more question," I said, "if you're using history snapshots, why did you time-travel back here tonight?"
"I began using history snapshots with the November 2005 report. When finance requests anything earlier than that, I still need to use the time machine."
With that, I let Mr. Century log on, run his report, and be on his way. Moments after the blue-shirted Mr. Century flashed back to the future, the white-shirted Mr. Century reappeared as he returned from the past. "Who are you?" he said with a start.
"I am B.I. Powers and I've come to make your time travel a thing of the past."
I told the present Mr. Century about history snapshots, just as the future Mr. Century said I would. He was extremely grateful and asked if there was anything he could do to repay me. I looked at my pocket watch, saw the hands creeping close to midnight, and knew the form that repayment would take. With a little help from Mr. Century's time machine, I made it home by 5:45 P.M., with enough time to fix franks and beans for Melissa and me. Over dinner, I told Melissa how truly important history can be.
This case involved travel through the dimension of time. In my next case, I discover that working with the time dimension of an OLAP cube can be just as tricky!
B.I. Powers shares an office at Superior Consulting Services in Minneapolis with Brian Larson, a frequent presenter about SQL Server business intelligence and author of Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 2006). Powers is too cheap to get his own email box but may be contacted through Larson's address at blarson@teamscs.com.
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