Browsing Cube In Management Studio Throws Class String Error

Using the Management Studio (SSMS) I just received an error which I hadn’t seen before.  Here’s what I was doing.

On my freshly-installed Windows 7 64-bit machine I have both SQL Server 2008 SP1 and SQL Server 2008 R2 (NOV CTP) running (both 64-bit as well).  And I just installed the new Contoso data warehouse and OLAP DB.

After setting up the data source connection of the Contoso_Retail OLAP database and processing it successfully, the next logical step is to try and browse the cubes, through the Management Studio.  So that’s what I tried, but unfortunately it gave me the following error:

Hmm, okay, that doesn’t look good!  “Invalid class string”, what does that mean??

So I tried the link that says “Click here to see detailed error information”, which gave me this:

I’m sorry, but where exactly are the details in this message?

Luckily a quick internet search gave me the solution (and reminded me of something which I actually knew but just didn’t think of because it’s all running in a totally new environment).

To browse cubes, SSMS is using a component from the “Microsoft Office 2003 Web Components” package, whatever that that means.

And the solution (as described here) is to:

• Open the list of installed programs (Windows Key + R > appwiz.cpl > enter)
• Locate the Office 2003 Web Components, right-click and select Change
• Follow the wizard to repair/reinstall the components

And now I am able to browse the cube without any issue!

Have fun!

Valentino.