- Glen (Xapity)
SCSM Data Warehouse - 4000 Char Limit
Have you noticed some custom fields not importing into the SCSM Data Warehouse?
It could be a limitation built into Microsoft Service Manager - there is a design flaw on any string value with a character limit of more the 4,000 - it will not import into the Service Manager Data Warehouse.
What does this mean in practical terms?
Often grooming can not be turned on as when the work item is groomed out of the operational database the data is completely lost. Basically it will be deleted in the grooming process.
So how did this happen.
Not really sure why, I guess performance issues in the original product. It is a limitation of the design of Service Manager that has been there from the beginning, see this blog post by Travis Wright from 2010:
From the blog you can see that this also applies to Rich Text format (RTF) properties as well.
What are the implications?
Well if you wanted to write 'War and Peace' in the description field you are out of luck. Keep any custom properties to 4000 char and do not use MaxChar. If you need to add bigger fields and still want to have the data imported into the Data Warehouse then you will have to add extra properties each at a max of 4000. Not a good solution and not very scalable. Attachments won't help as they are not imported into the Data Warehouse either.
The following articles provide background on customising the Data Warehouse behaviour:
A Deep Dive on Creating Relationship Facts in the Data Warehouse http://blogs.msdn.com/b/scplat/archive/2010/03/29/a-deep-dive-on-creating-relationship-facts-in-the-data-warehouse.aspx
A Deep Dive on Creating Outriggers and Dimensions in the Data Warehouse http://blogs.msdn.com/b/scplat/archive/2010/03/29/a-deep-dive-on-creating-outriggers-and-dimensions-in-the-data-warehouse.aspx
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