Defining Analysis Services Dimensions - SQL Server Analysis Services 2012 Cube Development - page 40

any attribute in the leftmost pane will allow setting the properties for that at-
tribute.
13. Hover your mouse pointer over the squiggly line under the promotion dimen-
sion in the leftmost pane and you'll see the warning: Create hierarchies in
non parent-child dimensions . This brings us to the next recipe, that is, cre-
ating dimension hierarchies.
How it works...
The only language through which you can communicate with the Analysis Services
server is Extensible Markup Language for Analysis ( XMLA ). Whether applying
project changes you develop through the SSDT user interface or processing objects
using SSMS (or the .NET code), all actions applicable to Analysis Services are trans-
lated into XMLA before being sent to the server.
If you right-click on any object within your SSDT solution (this means the SSDT pro-
ject, not the live database) and choose View Code , SSDT will display the full XMLA
for that object. Generally you would not have to edit the XMLA code, but occasion-
ally SSDT might raise errors while you're editing a solution, and it's very difficult to
work around these errors. In these rare cases, you might find that changing a few
letters in the XMLA code (for example, switching from one data type to another) is
easier than troubleshooting a potential bug in the SSDT user interface. Of course,
you must know exactly what you're doing before editing the XMLA code directly, and
you should make a backup of the solution prior to applying any changes. Reviewing
the code that SSDT generates behind the scenes is a great way to become familiar
with XMLA for Analysis Services' structures.