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Understanding the TFS Cube

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  • The initial learning curve for the TFS Cube is pretty steep.  It is quite overwhelming to figure out the relationships between the large number of dimensions and measure groups in the TFS cube at first.  In this blog entry I will explain some of the most commonly used perspectives and show how you can easily create Excel reports from them. 

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  • *Note* that this blog entry is still relevant to you even if you don't have perspectives on your cube.  What I cover here will help you better understand the cube schema.  In the demos below I connect Excel to cube perspectives.  However you can create the exact same reports by connecting to the Team System Cube.

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  • A perspective defines a viewable subset of a cube that provides focused, business-specific or application-specific viewpoints on the cube.  It is a feature only available in the Enterprise Edition of SQL Server.  Here are the out of box perspectives, we will explore the first 4 perspectives in this post:

    • Current Work Item
    • Work Item History
    • Code Churn
    • Test Result
    • Build
    • Code Coverage
    • Load Test

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  • The [Current Work Item] Perspective

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  • Here are the cube dimensions related to the [Current Work Item] measure group:

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  • Use the [Current Work Item] perspective if you would like to analyze the latest Work Item data.  For example, you may answer questions such as these:

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    • What is the active bug count by Area?
    • What is the remaining work by person?
    • What is the list of active tasks, and how much work is left in each?
    • Is there any active bugs assigned to my team that have not been modified in the past week?

 

In short, if you need to analyze the "as of now" work item data in the cube, [Current Work Item] perspective is the right perspective.  Beware that the [Work Item History] perspective can answer many of the same questions, but it is much more expensive (slower).

 

Video: Demo 1 - Active Bug Count by Area

 

Also use the [Current Work Item] perspective if you would like to analyze Related Work Items.  For example, You can answer questions such as these:

 

    • List all Tasks with Active related bugs
    • What tasks are blocked by active bugs assigned to my team?

 

There is a corresponding 'Related' dimension for every dimension that slices the [Current Work Item] measure group, e.g. [Area] and [Related Area], [Work Item] and [Related Work Item], etc.  This allows you to filter and to show attributes for work items and their related work items.  Note that the cube is designed for single hop relationships, i.e. work items and their related work items.  For multi-hop relationships, e.g. work items and the related work items relating to their related work items, use SQL queries against the Relational Warehouse

 

Video: Demo 2- All Tasks with Active Related Bugs

 

The [Work Item History] Perspective

 

Here are the cube dimensions related to the [Work Item History] measure group:

 

Work Item History Perspective

 

Use the [Work Item History] perspective to analyze historical work item data. 

 

Use the [Cumulative…] measures and the [Date] dimension to analyze point in time status or to show historical trend.  For example, you can answer questions such as these:

 

  • Bug count as of a certain point in time
  • Bug trend over a period of time
  • Trend of Completed Work per person over a period of time
  • The average time it takes to close an issue

 

Note that the [Cumulative…] measures are expensive during query time, shorten the date range if your report takes too long to render.

Although you can use the [Work Item History] perspectives to answer some of the questions concerning the latest work item data, use the [Current Work Item] perspective for greater performance.

 

Video: Demo 3 - Trend of Completed Work per Person over Time

 

Use the [State Change Count] measure for rate of change in work item state.  For example, you can answer questions such as these:

 

  • Incoming bug rate over a period of time
  • Activation, Resolve and Close rate for over a period of time

 

Note that [State Change Count] returns the number of state transition events, but not the number of work items in state transition.  For example, if we have a bug that was active yesterday, and it was resolved, reactivated and re-resolved today.  [State Change Count] will return the resolved rate of 2, even though only 1 bug got resolved.

 

Video: Demo 4 - Incoming Bug Rate over Time

Video: Demo 5 - Activation, Resolve and Close Rate for Work Items over Time

 

 

The [Code Churn] Perspective

 

Here are the cube dimensions related to the [Code Churn] measure group:

 

Code Churn Perspective

 

Use the [Code Churn] perspective to analyze historical code churn activities on Version Control.  For example, you can answer questions such as these:

 

  • How much code churn do we have over a period of time?
  • How much code churn do we have over a series of build?
  • How much code churn do we have over a series of changeset?
  • Who introduced the most churn?
  • What changesets go into each build?
  • How much code churn was introduced as the result of resolving a certain work item?

 

The [Total Churn] measure is defined as [Lines Added] + [Lines Deleted] + [Lines Modified], and it is the measure you should use to answer questions concerning lines of code churned.

Note that the [Total Lines] measure is expensive during query time.  Shorten the changeset, build or date range if your report takes too long to render.

 

Video: Demo 6 - Trend of Code Churn over Build per Person

Video: Demo 7 - Code Churn by Person per Changeset

 

The [Test Result] Perspective

 

Here are the cube dimensions related to the [Test Result] measure group:

 

Test Result Perspective

 

Use the [Test Result] perspective to analyze published test results.

 

In Team Test, each test can be run and published against a build multiple times.  Each build can contain multiple published runs and each run contains at most 1 published result from each test.  Let me illustrate the behavior of the different measures using a simple example:

 

Suppose there are 3 tests in the system and they were run and published to 2 builds in the following manner:

  • Build 1
    • Run 1-1
      • Test 1 - Failed
    • Run 1-2
      • Test 1 - Passed
      • Test 2 - Passed
  • Build 2
    • Run 2-1
      • Test 2 - Passed
      • Test 3 - Failed
    • Run 2-2
      • Test 3 - Passed

 

Here's how each measure would behave:

  • [Result Count] – counts all published results individually
    • Returns 1 for Run 1-1
    • Returns 2 for Run 1-2
    • Returns 3 for Build 1
  • [Result Transition Count] – counts the number of times the outcome of tests change between runs within the same build
    • Returns 1 for Run 1-1 because Test 1's changed no result to Failed
    • Returns 2 for Run 1-2 because Test 1 changed from Failed to Passed and Test 2 changed from no result to Passed
    • Returns 2 for Run 2-1 because both Test 2 and Test 3 changed from no result to having a result. Note that results are not carried forward from build to build
  • [Cumulative Result Count] – counts the latest result of each test in a build
    • Returns 2 for Build 1, the latest results come from Run 1-2
    • Returns 2 for Build 2, Test 2's latest result comes from Run 2-1 and Test 3's comes from Run 2-2
  • [Latest Result] – returns the string version of the latest result for a test
    • Returns "Passed" for both Test 1 and Test 2 for Build 1
    • Returns "Passed" for Test 2 and Test 3 for Build 2

 

Use the following measures to analyze results across Builds:

  • [Cumulative Result Count] - Ex: How many tests have passed and failed against each build?
  • [Latest Result] - Ex: What was the latest result for each test over a series of builds?

 

Video: Demo 8 - Number of Tests Passed and Failed over Build

Video: Demo 9 - Latest Test Result per Test per Build

 

Use the following measures to analyze results across Runs:

  • [Result Count] - Ex: How many tests passed and failed against each run?
  • [Result Transition Count] - Ex: Was there any improvement in pass rate over the previous run? i.e. how many failed tests from the previous run are now passing?

 

 

We will skip the details for the following perspectives.  Here are their measure group and dimension relationships for your reference:

 

The [Build] Perspective

 

Build Perspective

 

The [Code Coverage] Perspective

 

Code Coverage Perspective

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 01, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 01, 2007
    One of the devs on the TFS data warehouse team has just started blogging. He plans to blog "how to" and

  • Anonymous
    May 01, 2007
    En av utviklerne på teamet til TFS Data warehouse har begynt å blogge for å bedre forståelsen rundt dette

  • Anonymous
    May 02, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 03, 2007
    The Teams WIT Tools Blog on Understanding the TFS Cube. Buck Hodges on Update to "How to run tests in...

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2007
    Many of us lack the Enterprise version of SQL Server, and therefore don't have the perspectives.

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2007
    If you have STD version of SQL Server, you can create the same demo reports by connecting to the Team System Cube.  I've updated my blog to clarify that.  Thanks for the feedback.

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2007
    Один из разработчиков команды TFS data warehouse стартовал со своим блогом. Он планирует рассказывать

  • Anonymous
    May 05, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 05, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 06, 2007
    如果你已經採用了 TFS 專案一段時間了, 看到這些豐富的 動態報表之後, 你應該想要" 知道更多 "; 最近整理了一系列資料, 累積一段時間後. 在這裡重新整理了一次 所有 Wharehose 與 TFS

  • Anonymous
    May 06, 2007
    Artigo simplesmente fantástico de como buscar as informações de seus projetos controlados no TFS. http://blogs.msdn.com/teams_wit_tools/archive/2007/04/30/understanding-the-tfs-cube.aspx...

  • Anonymous
    May 08, 2007
    This is a great treatise on the TFS data warehouse and the TFS cube, giving some concrete information

  • Anonymous
    May 08, 2007
    Wish I could see these videos, but Soapbox doesn't support us poor folk in China!

  • Anonymous
    May 13, 2007
    Unfortunately Soapbox isn't public access to folks in the Pacific Northwest either.  Are there any other locations that the videos can be accessed from?

  • Anonymous
    May 25, 2007
    Is it possible to get the cube project files so I can make add more perspectives? if so, from where? thanks!!

  • Anonymous
    July 16, 2007
    Bonjour à tous et à toutes. J'ai découvert un article, de Jimmy Li, excellant sur Team Foundation Server

  • Anonymous
    July 16, 2007
    Wrapping up a few technical articles I hadn't had the time to look at in the past, I want to point you

  • Anonymous
    July 17, 2007
    Wrapping up a few technical articles I hadn't had the time to look at in the past, I want to point

  • Anonymous
    July 18, 2007
    如果你已經採用了 TFS 專案一段時間了, 看到這些豐富的 動態報表之後, 你應該想要" 知道更多 "; 最近整理了一系列資料, 累積一段時間後. 在這裡重新整理了一次 所有 Wharehose

  • Anonymous
    July 19, 2007
    如果你已經採用了 TFS 專案一段時間了, 看到這些豐富的 動態報表之後, 你應該想要" 知道更多 "; 最近整理了一系列資料, 累積一段時間後. 在這裡重新整理了一次 所有 Wharehose

  • Anonymous
    August 11, 2007
    I don't often post about reporting. My last post was about sample reports for TFS from a year ago. If

  • Anonymous
    August 11, 2007
    I don't often post about reporting. My last post was about sample reports for TFS from a year ago

  • Anonymous
    August 11, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 20, 2008
    As the multitude of companies adopting TFS continues to grow, I'm getting more and more questions around

  • Anonymous
    April 21, 2008
    Welcome! I thought that I would kick this blog off with a list of some good resources for learning about

  • Anonymous
    May 31, 2008
    The initial learning curve for the TFS Cube is pretty steep. It is quite overwhelming to figure out the relationships between the large number of dimensions and measure groups in the TFS cube at first. In this blog entry I will explain some of the mos

  • Anonymous
    June 04, 2008
    Here are some notes and a list of questions and answers regarding the TFS Reporting architecture. I gave

  • Anonymous
    June 04, 2008
    We just finished our first real sprint using TFS, Excel, and the Agile process. One of the things that

  • Anonymous
    June 04, 2008
    The initial learning curve for the TFS Cube is pretty steep. It is quite overwhelming to figure out the relationships between the large number of dimensions and measure groups in the TFS cube at first. In this blog entry I will explain some of the mos

  • Anonymous
    June 08, 2008
    Järgnev on väärtuslik informatsioon, juhul kui kasutate Team Foundation Server 2008 -t ja olete mõelnud

  • Anonymous
    July 08, 2008
    Хотя я уже довольно много времени занимаюсь TFS, его хранилище данных и создание собственных отчетов

  • Anonymous
    June 04, 2009
    Occasionally I get asked how to create custom reports and modify the existing reports in TFS. First,

  • Anonymous
    July 21, 2009
    Introducing such a topic you'd like to congratulate you've let us know. Have good work

  • Anonymous
    July 28, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    June 19, 2013
    Hi, i am not getting Current Work Item Work Item History cube  can anyone tell me how to get these two cube

  • Anonymous
    September 16, 2013
    Any update for TFS 2012 using Scrum Template?

  • Anonymous
    April 23, 2015
    Comment from year 2015: Please never delete this article :D

  • Anonymous
    January 13, 2016
    Good document does anyone have any further links discussing some of the newer features in TFS 2015 ?