Cube Design - Professional SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 with MDX - page 263

Creating Perspectives
Analysis Services 2005 provides you with the option of creating a cube that
combines many fact tables. Each cube dimension can contain several attrib-
utes and hierarchies. Even though the cube might contain all the relevant data
for business analysis combined into a single object, the users of the cube
might only be interested in sections of the cube. For example you can have a
cube that contains sales and budgeting information of a company. The Sales
department is only interested in viewing sales-relevant data, whereas the
users involved in budgeting or forecasting next year's revenue are only interes-
ted in budget-relevant sections of the cube. Typically, users do not like to see
too much extra information. In order to accommodate this, Analysis Services
2005 provides you with the option of creating a view of a cube that only con-
tains a subset of objects within the cube, called a perspective.
In the Adventure Works DW cube you have created you have two fact tables,
FactInternetSales and FactResellerSales. To understand the behavior of per-
spectives, create a perspective for Internet Sales and a perspective for
Reseller Sales. The cube itself is the default perspective. The following steps
show you how to create new perspectives:
1. Click the Perspective tab in the Cube Designer. You will see a column
on the left showing the measures, dimensions, and calculated mem-
bers as shown in Figure 6-30 .
Figure 6-30