Dimension-Based MDX Calculations - Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services - page 222

FIGURE 13.3 The formula [Measures].[Store Sales] appears in the same row as the
Gross Sales member.
If you go back to Figure 13.2, which shows the results of browsing the cube, you can see
that the value of Gross Sales corresponds to the total sales of all the stores in the
FoodMart enterprise.
Using custom member formulas enables you to not only change how values are aggre-
gated for particular dimension member, but you can also change the properties of cells
associated with a member using custom member properties.
To create a custom member property in a dimension, you follow a process similar to the
one you use for creating custom member formulas. You add a column to the dimension
table in the relational database. Each row corresponds to a dimension member; the value
of that row in the custom member property column contains the name of a valid cell
property (for more discussion of cell properties, refer to Chapter 11, “Advanced MDX”)
and the value of such property, using the following syntax:
<property identifier> = '<property value>' [, <property identifier> =
'<property value>'...]
After you create a column for your custom member property, you specify the
CustomRollupPropertiesColumn property of the dimension attribute to which you assign
the custom member property. If you have a parent-child dimension, you set the
CustomRollupPropertiesColumn property on the parent attribute—in FoodMart 2008,
that would be the Accounts attribute for the Account dimension.
In the FoodMart 2008 sample, we created an account_properties column in the accounts
table and we assigned the FORMAT_STRING property to two accounts: Net Sales and Gross