Creating Your First Multidimensional Cube - Getting Started with SQL Server 2012 Cube Development - page 65

Tip
It is good common practice to always use keys without any business
meaning generated exclusively to identify the row ( surrogate keys )
whendesigningyourdatawarehouse.Thesekeysshouldbeshortprefer-
able of the integer data. Using a numeric key column instead of a string
key column or a composite key will improve the performance of attrib-
utes that contain many members. You can specify the numeric surrog-
ate column as the key column and still use a string column as the name
column so that the attribute members appear the same to end users.
Another reason for using surrogate keys is that it is necessary to have
unique values in the dimension key. Surrogate keys make this easier if
you do not have unique values in your source data.
5. Choose DateName in NameColumn . The name column is what the user will
see when they perform the analysis. As we are building the Time dimension,
what we want to show is the date to the user. Click on the Next button.
6. In the next screen, you can add the attributes that you want to have as part
of your dimension. Add Month Number Of Year , Calendar Quarter ,
and Calendar Year .
7. You leave them as regular attribute type and enable the browsing on the at-
tributes and click on the Next button.