Client Applications (Analysis Services - Multidimensional Data)
When working with client applications in multiple languages for Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services, the following general guidelines allow you to increase the portability of your business intelligence solution.
Handling Translations
Translations provide display information for the names of Analysis Services objects, but the identifiers for the same objects are not translated. Whenever possible, use the identifiers and keys for Analysis Services objects instead of the translated captions and names. For example, use member keys instead of member names for Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) statements and scripts to ensure portability across multiple languages.
Handling Date and Time Values
When you perform month and day-of-week comparisons and operations, use the numeric date and time parts instead of date and time part strings. Date and time part strings are determined in part by the language identifier specified for the instance, and the current translation provided by the instance for the members of the time dimension. Take advantage of date and time functions in MDX for negotiating time dimensions, as well as the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) date and time functions for returning numeric date and time parts instead of the name strings. Use the literal date and time part strings when returning results to be displayed to a user, because the strings are frequently more meaningful than a numeric representation. However, do not code any logic that depends on the displayed names being in a specific language.