I am building cubes using .bat files.
Which is the best file to use for cube builds the .mdl or the .pyi file.
I am not sure what you mean by .bat files. Those are usually batch files on Windows.
I have built a bunch of cubes from flat files and from databases and always used .pyi as the model file in Transformer and I think .mdl is the compiled version of .pyi which can be used to upgrade models from one version to another.
Edited : Sorry, I switched by mistake. .pyi is the compiled/encrypted file.
Pyi are binary files, they are able to save the password. It seems that they are a bit faster than mdl files.
If you are making lots of changes in the Pyi , from time to time save it as MDL , and resave the mdl to Pyi. All the changes in the Pyi are making the Pyi bigger and bigger, by saving it to mdl then to pyi again , you are removing the un-necessary data from the pyi and making the pyi file smaller.
MDL files can be opened in notepad.
Recommandation if you are working with PYI, is to have always a backup in MDL. If the pyi is corrupted ( it happens ...) there is no way to fix it.
Have a look to this post (http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=688096)
Thanks so much for the info.