Extending and Customizing Cubes - SQL Server Analysis Services 2012 Cube Development - page 129

Chapter 4. Extending and Customizing
Cubes
In this chapter, we will cover:
• Defining calculated measures
• Defining named sets
• Defining drillthrough actions
• Defining URL actions
• Defining reporting actions
• Defining key performance indicators
• Defining perspectives
• Defining translations
• Defining measure expressions
Introduction
This chapter contains recipes for extending Analysis Services cubes with calcula-
tions, actions, and key performance indicators (KPIs). Additionally, you will learn how
to customize cubes using translations , perspectives , and measure expressions .
As you learned in the previous chapters, Analysis Services cubes expose data found
in relational data sources. The primary advantage of polling SSAS cubes in lieu of re-
lational tables is the swift execution of queries achieved by the efficient data storage in
the MOLAP format and precalculated summary values called aggregations. However,
relational data sources might not contain all numbers helpful for business analysis.
For example, you could have sales data for each broker, but the application might
also need to compare the average sale amount per broker in the northern states with
the respective performance of brokers in the south, east and west regions. You might
also need to calculate each product's contribution to total sales per region. Although
you could include calculation definitions in each user query, it's preferable to define
them at the cube level for two reasons: to provide consistent dataset for all users and
to benefit from the SSAS global calculation cache for better query performance.
Actions extend the cube's functionality to the next step that the user might want to
take based on data analysis. For example, actions can display additional details for