A connection cannot be made. Ensure that the server is running. Sql Server Analysis Services. ADOMD client

Error again on an application that worked before!!! Aaah! this is what we face every other day. in the tech world. 

Without going into details of those errors, let's focus on an error message as follows:- 

"A connection cannot be made. Ensure that the server is running." 

and then the inner exception message 

INNER EXCEPTION MESSAGE

===========================

Unable to write data to the transport connection: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.

so yes i am talking about a .Net application trying to connect to SSAS (Sql server Analysis services) in order to process a cube.

so the cube was already there, and it gets processed every night smoothly but how come if i try to process the cube manually via the application, it results in an error! 

well, looking at the error it gives you a feel that the following might have happened 

•  Analysis services aren't running
• OR it has something to do with the Sql browser service 
• OR some network restriction

hmmm ... Not any of above! then you can follow the remaining post :) 

The issue was that the user we used to launch the application doesn't have rights on SSAS. You need to launch your .Net application with a user account having Administrator rights on SSAS ( Shift - Right click-> Run as User)

here is how to do assign rights in SSAS: - 

• Start SSMS
• Connect Analysis services
• Right click on the server name and click properties
• As shown below, add the desired user

hope that helps!

As a data integration specialist, i have been writing sql scripts to fetch data from one database and load those records in another database; ofcourse after some manipulation. 
Ah! when it involves datetime stored in a string format in the source table then it can be problematic for you to manipulate it correctly.
I am showing a sample (ofcourse just the datetime stuff) here to understand better:-

Sample

create table SourceData( offered_date nvarchar(30) )

insert into SourceData values('2016-09-20 15:59:29')
insert into SourceData values('2016-09-20 15:59:40')
insert into SourceData values('2016-09-20 15:59:30')

select *from SourceData
Here is how the output look like:- 

offered_date
2016-09-20 15:59:29
2016-09-20 15:59:40
2016-09-20 15:59:30

Scenario
My task was to get this data aggregated on an hourly basis. So i simply converted the string value in a datetime and got the hour value.
precisely as follows:-

select datepart(hour, convert(smalldatetime,offered_date)) Offered_Hour,*
from SourceData

Offered_Hour    offered_date
15    2016-09-20 15:59:29
16    2016-09-20 15:59:40
16    2016-09-20 15:59:30

Issue
Here is the twist! first record is correct but the next two records are wrong! 
so the conversion function to smalldatetime has rounded the seconds value to the minute and this has caused 15:59:30 to appear as 16:00:00
SmallDatetime gives precision to a minute level only (rounding off seconds value)  

Solution
so i ended up using datetime2 datatype instead of smalldatetime that gives you the exact value after conversion. 

Here is how it looks like now:-
select datepart(hour, convert(datetime2,offered_date)) Offered_Hour,*
from SourceData

Offered_Hour    offered_date
15    2016-09-20 15:59:29
15    2016-09-20 15:59:40
15    2016-09-20 15:59:30

Yes Yes now it gives the correct hour value!! 
Starting with Sql server 2008 database developers are getting familiar with the datetime2.
Clearly, datetime2 is an upgrade of smalldatetime when it comes to precision.