Change culture/collation of an Analysis Services Tabular database

When you create a Tabular model for Analysis Services, the Culture and Collation properties are set automatically and cannot be changed by the SSDT user interface in Visual Studio. The biggest issue is the workspace database, because these properties cannot be modified on a deployed database, and Visual Studio creates a workspace database to enable the visual editing with data preview in Visual Studio.

In order to change the Culture and/or Collation properties of an Analysis Tabular database, you have to edit the BIM file externally and then deploy this database as a new one. If you are using Visual Studio, follow the steps corresponding to the workspace configuration you use.

Change Culture/Collation using Integrated Workspace

1. Close Visual Studio.
2. Open the folder containing the visual studio project and the BIM file with Windows Explorer. Let’s call it <project folder>.
3. Delete the directory <project folder>\bin\Data and its content. (This is the integrated workspace database).
4. Open the .BIM file of your project using Tabular Editor and change the properties following the instructions of this article.
5. Save the .BIM file and close Tabular Editor.
6. Open Visual Studio and open the project file. This generates a new integrated workspace database that will get the new Culture and Collation settings.
7. You have to refresh the preview data in the workspace database at this point.

Change Culture/Collation using a separate Workspace server

1. Identify the workspace database name in the Visual Studio project.
2. Open a connection to the Workspace Server using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).
3. Locate the Workspace database in SSMS.
4. Close Visual Studio.
5. Delete the Workspace database in SSMS. If it is not visible, it has been detached by Visual Studio. In that case, Attach the database and then delete it.
6. Open the folder containing the visual studio project and the BIM file with Windows Explorer. Let’s call it <project folder>.
7. Delete the directory <project folder>\bin\Data and its content. (This is the integrated workspace database)
8. Open the .BIM file of your project using Tabular Editor and change the properties following the instructions of this article.
9. Save the .BIM file and close Tabular Editor
10. Open Visual Studio and open the project file. This generates a new workspace database in the workspace server. The new database will get the new Culture and Collation settings.
11. If you have an error at this point, identify the detached database you have on the workspace server and remove it (see step 5 – you didn’t delete the database at that point). Then, repeat step 10 until it completes successfully.
12. You have to refresh the preview data in the workspace database at this point.