How to create a MDS entity via Excel add-in?

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In this Post, we’ll see how I (as an Administrator) created a Master Data Services Entity via MDS add-in for Excel:

1. Created a Model via MDS Web Application. I named it “customer Information”

1 create a Model in Master Data Services2. Switch to Excel

3. Open the File that has the Data that you want to load to MDS

4. Switch to Master Data tab in Excel
[Resource: Steps I followed to Install SQL Server 2012 Master Data Services (MDS) on my Demo Machine: And then Installed the Excel Add-in]

5. Connect to MDS server (via Excel add-in)

6. Select Model as CustomerInformation

7. Under Build Model, select Create Entity

create entity Master Data Services Excel

8. Configure the values in the “Create Entity” > click OK

SQL Server create entity Master Data Services Excel

9. Switch to MDS web application to see the new entity:

MDS web application explorer SQL Server

I hope this helps! Your comments are very welcome!

How to view error(s) that occur during Master data Service’s Staging Process?

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To view error(s) that occur during MDS’s staging process, we have two views: stg.viw_name_MemberErrorDetails & stg.viw_name_RelationshipErrorDetails. For the purpose of this blog post, let me show you how I (as an administrator) view information from stg.viw_name_MemberErrorDetails.

1) Name of the entity: supplier & Name of model is Suppliers

2) I imported data into staging table stg.supplier_leaf via SSIS

3) Now here’s how you can see the errors that occur during MDS’s staging process:

we can go to MDS web application to initiate the staging process > start the batch > after completion you can see the status as well as if it has any errors or not:

Master Data Services Errors4) Now if you see that there’s an error, then you can go to stg.viw_name_MemberErrorDetails to see what are the errors. In my case, I am going to run the query:

select * from stg.viw_supplier_MemberErrorDetails where Batch_ID=2

You can get the above query via MDS web application too:

Master Data Services SQL Server Staging Process

5) And as you can imagine, you can get access to this error data via SSIS (SQL Server Integration services) too. So if you have a workflow that a. Loads data to MDS and b. initiates the Batch process via Stored Procedure; then you can program it to get access to errors from the stg.viw_name_MemberErrorDetails & stg.viw_name_RelationshipErrorDetails tables.

SQL Server Integration Services and Master Data Services

That’s about it for this post! I hope this helps. Your comments are very welcome!

Master Data Services: Analogy to remember what are Models, Entities and Attributes

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Let’s understand master data services terminologies using an analogy. We’ll use the world of RDBMS for our analogy:

Terminology in MDSAnalogy w/ RDBMS
 Models SQL server Schema which is used to group logical entities together.
 Entities Table
AttributesColumns

And here’s a picture that captures the thought: Models contains entities; entities contains Attributes:

master data services models entities attributes

And Here’s the official reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee633763.aspx

Conclusion:

Thinking about the master data services terminologies by drawing an analogy helps me remember them – I hope it helps someone out there too.

Resource: Learn to build an Enterprise Information Management system using Data Quality Services, Master Data Services and SQL Server Integration Services

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[UPDATE 29 Dec 2012: One more whitepaper that’s on the same subject and should be read after the tutorial: Cleanse and Match Master Data by Using EIM ]

Here’s the resource: Tutorial: Enterprise Information Management using SSIS, MDS, and DQS Together

Here’s what you’ll learn:

– Learn to use Data Quality client to create DQS Knowledge Base, cleanse data in an excel data, remove duplicated data from the excel file

DQS client domain values clean data data quality services

– Learn Use MDS add-in for Excel, store the cleansed and matched data in MDS

Master data services add in for excel

– Learn how to use the MDS Web UI:

SQL Server 2012 master data services MDS Web UI

– Learn to Automate the process of receiving input data, cleaning and matching it and storing the master data into MDS via SSIS!

SSIS automate DQS MDS data quality component

That’s about it! check out the Tutorial to learn about all the DQS, MDS & SSIS goodness!