XML for Analysis protocol error: The server response format is unexpected.

Question

Hello,

I have an issue with my Analysis Services server.

Backstory: We created an SSAS Tabular model in my organization and I'm in change of keeping its table up to date with the daily changes.

We created an SSIS package that uses XMLA script to "Process Data" the partitions of the table that we want each day and at the end we do a "Process Recalc" on the whole database. Sometimes I need to do some process of the tables manually for specific old partitions.

The problem appeared the last couple of weeks when I try to "Process Data" the partition I want from the wizard of SQL Management Studio. For some unknown reason I get the following error.

XML for Analysis protocol error: The server response format is unexpected. All tags between an Exception element and the Messages section must be closed.

If I try the same action through and XMLA script or on "small" tables the process completes successfully.

Important to note is that the data for the tables of the SSAS Model are taken by running some views on an other database. Everything were working fine until a couple weeks ago and I can't find the reason. I searched for this specific error message but I found nothing helpful.

Any advise or suggestion will be much appreciated.

*UPDATE
I tied to use SQL Server Profiler to get some answers. So far I found that it goes through some LOCKS and RestrictionLists before failing. I don't know the significance of this discovery but I provide a screenshot just in case.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Hi @ΓΕΝΑΓΡΙΤΗΣ ΑΝΤΩΝΗΣ ，

According to the error message "XML for Analysis protocol error: The server response format is unexpected. All tags between an Exception element and the Messages section must be closed.", it seems like a syntax error. As we can't check your whole XMLA script, please do double check if you are missing some tags or some illegal tags for that particular partition.

Regards，

Zoe

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Answer 2

After some testing I found that the issue is connected with the RAM memory usage of the server. The issue appears when the server's memory is at capacity. When the server is restarted and the memory resets only then the issue disappears.