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Part IX: Business Intelligence
Like the Dimension Designer, you must deploy changes to a cube before you can browse
them.Measures
Each measure is based on a column from the data source view and an aggregate function.
The aggregate function determines how data from the fact table is summarized. A variety
of aggregations are available including, but not limited to, the following:■ sum■ (^) max and min
■ counts of distinct records
■ (^) last non-empty
A common aggregate to use is Sum to add values such as order quantities or sales amounts,
whereas last non-empty could be used for getting the latest inventory value from a measure
that pre-aggregates the inventory daily.
The best way to add a new measure is to right-click in the Measures pane, choose New
Measure, and specify the aggregation function and table/column combination. Measure
groups are created for each fact table and folders can be defi ned as well. The measure
FormatString should also be specifi ed by choosing a provided format or entering a cus-
tom format.
Because you can create multiple measures in a single cube, you can set the
DefaultMeasure property to choose a measure to be pulled for queries when no measure
is specifi ed.
Cube Dimensions
You can disable or make invisible the hierarchies and attributes for each dimension if
appropriate for a particular cube context. Access these settings in the Dimensions pane,
and then adjust the associated properties. These properties are specifi c to a dimension’s
role in the cube and do not change the underlying dimension design.
You can add dimensions to the cube by right-clicking the Dimensions pane and choosing
New Dimension. After the dimension is added to the cube, review the dimension usage tab
to ensure that the dimension appropriately relates to all measure groups.
Dimension Usage
The dimension usage tab, shown in Figure 53-9, displays a table showing how each dimen-
sion is related to each measure group. With dimensions and measure groups as row and col-
umn headers, respectively, each cell of the table defi nes the relationship.
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