Don't be a Glenn

Sometimes old errors are caused by different reasons than what originally caused them.  Case in point, I was working on a batch and MaxL script to automate an Essbase Studio deploy command in 11.1.2.3.5X.  I ran the script and got an Error message  “Essmsh exe has stopped working” and the batch file crashed.  Thinking I did nothing wrong, I googled the error message and got multiple references to a document statin this was a bug and to use the 32 bit version of MaxL instead of the 4 bit version. 

This would have been fine except for the fact that I had other deploy commands working fine using the same Essmsh command. In addition, the document was for 11.1.2.1 and was fixed in 11.1.2.2.   I went around and around, changing dimension order as I remembered I had issues in the past with the accounts dimension being first. Nothing I did to the script or the outline mattered.

I spent way too much on this and was getting very frustrated. The process actually did produce a log which I finally looked at and found

Caused by: Cannot end incremental build. Essbase Error(1060053): Outline has errors
\\Outline verification errors:

\\Member Income Stmt Calc has no value source.  Aggregate storage outlines require non level-0 members in accounts dimension to be either non-stored members or have internal/external formula.

\\Member REPORTING_STATS has no value source.  Aggregate storage outlines require non level-0 members in accounts dimension to be either non-stored members or have internal/external formula.

\\Member MISC has no value source.  Aggregate storage outlines require non level-0 members in accounts dimension to be either non-stored members or have internal/external formula.

Hmm, So I went back into the Essbase Model properties and lo and behold the setting for data storage was set to use existing.  I do have a column in my data source for storage type which I forgot to set as an external source. I reran and it worked like a charm.  This made sense as I had set the accounts dimension to rebuild. The accounts would have all been deleted and not re-added properly.

The Moral of the story is twofold. First, When you have an issue don’t assume you did everything right the first time (I didn’t) and second, don’t assume that what you read on google for older versions is going to solve your issue.