SSAS: How to Create multiple partitions in a single XMLA script

This piece was originally posted last week, 25th June, prior to the post on multiple processing scripts in an xmla command: http://sqlbanana.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/ssas-how-to-run-multiple-xmla-scripts_6877.html

For some reason the post was not published and lost, so i am reposting it here.
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I was recently hit with a fairly simple problem, but it took me a while to figure out how to do it, so I thought I'd share it to save others some time.

I wanted create a series of partitions on the measure groups of my SSAS 2008R2 database.  I needed a partition for each month, for 5 years.  For each measure group this corresponds to 60 partitions, and I did not want to have to run them one at a time or in multiple windows. 

The solution is to create a single xmla command, that will create all the required partitions in a single batch. Here's how...

First create your Batch tags.  We want all our partitions to be created in a single batch.  Having multiple batch tags in a single session will throw an error, but multiple Create scripts inside a single batch is perfectly fine.

 Batch tags:

<Batch xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine" Transaction="true">
.
.
.
</Batch>

  Then put all your create scripts for each partition inside these start and end tags.
<Create xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine">
.
.
</Create>
Thus the entire script to create the partitions all in a single command will look something like this:

<Batch xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine" Transaction="true">
<
Create xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine"><
ParentObject><
DatabaseID>MyDB</DatabaseID><
CubeID>MyCube</CubeID><
MeasureGroupID>MyFACT</MeasureGroupID></
ParentObject><
ObjectDefinition><
Partition xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:ddl2="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine/2" xmlns:ddl2_2="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine/2/2" xmlns:ddl100_100="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2008/engine/100/100" xmlns:ddl200="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2010/engine/200" xmlns:ddl200_200="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2010/engine/200/200"><
ID>FACT_20130301</ID><
Name>FACT_20130301</Name><
Source xsi:type="QueryBinding"><
DataSourceID>MyDS</DataSourceID><
QueryDefinition>SELECT COL1 FROM FACT
WHERE (DATE_KEY = 20130301)
</QueryDefinition></
Source><
StorageMode>Molap</StorageMode><
ProcessingMode>Regular</ProcessingMode><
Slice>[Dates].[Date].&amp;[20130301]</Slice><
ProactiveCaching><
SilenceInterval>-PT1S</SilenceInterval><
Latency>-PT1S</Latency><
SilenceOverrideInterval>-PT1S</SilenceOverrideInterval><
ForceRebuildInterval>-PT1S</ForceRebuildInterval><
Source xsi:type="ProactiveCachingInheritedBinding" /></
ProactiveCaching></
Partition></
ObjectDefinition></
Create>
<
Create xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine"><
ParentObject><
DatabaseID>MyDB</DatabaseID><
CubeID>MyCube</CubeID><
MeasureGroupID>MyFACT</MeasureGroupID></
ParentObject><
ObjectDefinition><
Partition xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:ddl2="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine/2" xmlns:ddl2_2="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2003/engine/2/2" xmlns:ddl100_100="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2008/engine/100/100" xmlns:ddl200="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2010/engine/200" xmlns:ddl200_200="http://schemas.microsoft.com/analysisservices/2010/engine/200/200"><
ID>FACT_20130302</ID><
Name>FACT_20130302</Name><
Source xsi:type="QueryBinding"><
DataSourceID>MyDS</DataSourceID><
QueryDefinition>SELECT COL1 FROM FACT
WHERE (DATE_KEY = 20130302)
</QueryDefinition></
Source><
StorageMode>Molap</StorageMode><
ProcessingMode>Regular</ProcessingMode><
Slice>[Dates].[Date].&amp;[20130302]</Slice><
ProactiveCaching><
SilenceInterval>-PT1S</SilenceInterval><
Latency>-PT1S</Latency><
SilenceOverrideInterval>-PT1S</SilenceOverrideInterval><
ForceRebuildInterval>-PT1S</ForceRebuildInterval><
Source xsi:type="ProactiveCachingInheritedBinding" /></
ProactiveCaching></
Partition></
ObjectDefinition></
Create>
</
Batch>


We can extend this now to include all 60 partitions in a single file/Batch. If you ever need to rerun, or modify the scripts, you now have them all in a single place, instead of 60 different places.

Hope this helps :)