Dimensions in the Conceptual Model - Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services - page 51

TABLE 5.3 Properties of Relationship

Property Description

Flexible : The key of a dependent attribute, and therefore the
whole member of the dependent attribute, can be changed at any
time. In our example, the Marital Status property is a depen-
dent attribute with a flexible relationship because it will periodically
change (unfortunately).

Defines the nature of the relationship of the key of related attrib-
utes when those members are used as member properties.

Cardinality

One-to-One : There is one (and only one) member of the current
attribute that relates to each member of the related attribute. For
example, if we were associating the names of months with the
numbers that represent their order in the year, we would have a
one-to-one relationship.
One-to-Many : One of the members of the related attribute can be
used as a property of various members from the current attribute.
For example, member Married from attribute Marital Status ,
can be applied to many members of Customer attribute. One-to-
many cardinality is much more frequently used than one-to-one.

Defines the relationship of sets of members in the related
attribute and in the current attribute. You can't set this property
through the Dimension Editor; use DDL.
Mandatory : For each member of the related attribute, there is at
least one member of the current attribute that references that
member. For example, each state has to have at least one city.

Optionality

Optional : For some of the members of the related attribute, there
might not be any member of the current attribute that references
that attribute. For example, there are cities that don't have any
stores.

When the related attribute is used as a member property of the
current attribute, usually the name of the property of the current
attribute is the same as the name of the related attribute. For
example, when the Gender attribute is used as a property of the
Customer attribute, we say that the Customer attribute has a prop-
erty, Gender . However, if we want the property of the Customer
attribute to be known as Sex rather than Gender , we define the
name in the relationship as “Sex.”

Name and
Translations

Determines whether the related attribute is accessible to the user
as a member property for the current attribute.
False: The related attribute can't be used as a member property
of the current attribute.
True : The user can access the related attribute as a member
property of the current attribute.

Visibility