Measures and Multidimensional Analysis - Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services - page 72

Measures in a Multidimensional Cube

Measures define the following:

. How and what you will analyze in your model

. The resources that will be used for your analysis

. The precision of analysis that will be available

. The speed with which the data will be loaded into the model and retrieved from it

In Data Definition Language (DDL), a measure is a minor object of the model, defined by
the major object, the measure group. (We discuss measure groups later in this chapter.)
When you edit a measure, the specifications for the whole measure group are sent to
Analysis Services.

Making sure that you have the right set of measures in the model and the correct defini-
tion for each one is very important for the performance of the system. Table 7.1 describes
the measure properties available in the conceptual model.

TABLE 7.1 Measure Properties

Property Description

The name of the measure. The name of a measure should be
unique not only in the measure group, but also in the cube. As you
would for any other name in the system, avoid using very long
strings because they make the system less convenient and slow it
down.

Name

The unique identifier used to reference the measure. The ID defines
the key of the measure and, as opposed to the Name , can't be
changed when you edit the model.

ID

A description of the measure. Description

Defines the translations for the name of the measure and the corre-
sponding member in the Measure dimension to languages different
from the language of the cube.

Translations

Determines whether the measure is visible to the user of the appli-
cation model. Turn off the Visible property when the measure is
used only for internal computations.

Visible

The data specification for the measure (see Chapter 5, “Dimensions
in the Conceptual Model”). The Source property defines all the
information needed for the correct loading of measure data into the
model.

Source