Analytic Snapshots

From the sounds of it, this will be a great tool once Summer '08 rolls out. However, I have a couple questions and haven't been able to find any pre-release documentation to clarify them. Hopefully someone else has figured them out or can shed some insight.

I noticed that snapshots can only be scheduled at 11 pm. I have to assume that this is just a pre-release limitation? Once the update rolls out will we have access to the full 24-hour spectrum?
Where are the snapshot objects actually stored? I figured it would be on the object tab (the reported object, that is) since it doesn't necessarily apply to specific records - although I have checked the records as well. Didn't see the analytic history as a related list option, didn't see anything in the object setup, I tried creating a report on the custom object that I had a snapshot on and encountered an internal server error (actually, this happened on all objects). I know an object is created for these snapshots but finding them has proven quite a task.

Any help will be much appreciated!

May 22, 2008
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jpizzala
I may have figured out the answer to my previously posted #2. When Salesforce says that the snapshots are stored as objects, I interpreted this to mean the snapshots were stored as a record of a new object (Analytic Snapshot, or something, I suppose). What actually happens is that every single record that is returned by the report is simply cloned - no special object record is created - to create the "snapshot" of that particular object at a certain point in time.

I have implemented this in a pre-release as a test and here is what I did:
Create custom object called Rental with a few fields (Account (lookup), Item Rented, Pickup Date, Dropoff Date, etc.)
Scheduled an Analytic Snapshot to run a report that returns all Rentals in my system (I only created 2)
Let it run every weekday at 11pm
In checking back on its progress, I guess I just ignored the duplicate records at first, assuming I had created them during some other tests and forgot about them. This new "discovery" poses many more questions/concerns with this implementation:
Apparently lookup fields are not mappable with the Analytic Snapshots - any SF admins know the reasoning for this?
Is it to prevent duplication of data on the parent accounts?
How do we then report on objects as they relate to their parents?
Isn't this going to cause major storage issues with clients returning thousands of records per snapshot?
How do we keep our views clean? I haven't checked the WSDL for the pre-release org to see if any new meta data information has been added to signify that a record is a snapshot clone - is there any sure-fire way of determining which records are clones from a programmatic/reporting/view-generation standpoint?

May 23, 2008
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AlexY
Are there any limitations on the number of records that can be inserted into an anaytic snapshot object?

I have set one up and I am trying to insert about 7,000 records but only 2000 records were inserted into the object with the error message saying "some rows failed".

Regards

Alex