Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Building dimension hierarchies
Analysis Services hierarchies specify the navigation path for browsing dimension
data. There are two types of hierarchies: attribute and user-defined hierarchies. For
example, in the promotion dimension we just created, we immediately have a hier-
archy for each attribute:
Promotion Name
,
Start Date
,
End Date
,
English
Promotion Category
,
English Promotion Type
,
Discount Percent
,
Min-
imum Quantity
, and
Maximum Quantity
. Attribute hierarchies contain two levels.
The top-level is referred to as the
All
level and includes the aggregated value for
all the members included in the attribute. For example, the
English Promotion Cat-
egory
attribute hierarchy's All level will show the aggregate value of sales for all the
promotion categories:
Customer
,
No Discount
, and
Reseller
. The other level in the
same hierarchy will show individual promotion categories, such as
Customer
.
User hierarchies combine multiple attributes and must be defined explicitly. In this re-
cipe we will create a user hierarchy, which allows displaying the summary data for
each promotion category, then drilling down to the promotion type, and finally expos-
ing individual promotion names.
How to do it...
Let's learn how to define multiattribute hierarchies by using the following steps:
1. Right-click on the
English Promotion Category
attribute and choose
Start
New Hierarchy
. This adds a new hierarchy object to the
Hierarchies
pane.
2. Drag the
English Promotion Type
attribute and drop it under the
English
Promotion Category
attribute in the newly created hierarchy. Repeat the
same for the
Promotion Name
attribute, placing it under
English Promotion
Type
. The dimension structure should now resemble the following screenshot:
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