I typically style the
lowest level in the Date hierarchy as Date; calendar, fiscal, and
perhaps other date hierarchies would typically share Date as a common
lowest level.
Now let's make a few
enhancements to the Customer and Product dimensions. First, let's
provide an identifier for our customers that makes them easily isolable. We
might learn from interviews with information consumers, for example, that a
common desire is to be able to seek information on customers by name, last name
first, with account number also readily viewable in the ID. This will require
a concatenation of the name information, together with the Account No
information (our current dimension level). We will take the following steps to
give the information consumers what they want.
41.
Click to highlight the Customer
dimension in the cube tree.
42.
Select the Advanced tab
in the Properties pane.
43.
Click the Member Names
Unique property field.
44.
Ensure that False is
selected as the property setpoint from the dropdown selector.
45.
Ensure that the Allow Duplicate
Names property is set to True.
The Advanced tab
of the Properties pane for the Customer dimension appears as
shown in Illustration 43:
Illustration 43: Properties Pane, Advanced Tab, Customer Dimension
46.
Click to highlight the Account
No level of the Customer dimension in the cube tree.
47.
Select the Advanced tab
in the Properties pane.
48.
Click the Member Names
Unique property field.
49.
Ensure that False is
selected as the property setpoint from the dropdown selector.
The Advanced tab
of the Properties pane for the Account No level appears as shown
in Illustration 44:
Illustration 44: Properties Pane, Advanced Tab, Account No Level
50.
Select the Basic tab in
the Properties pane for the Account No level.
51.
Click the Member Name Column
property.
52.
Type the following into the
field:
"customer"."lname"+', '+"customer"."fname"+' -- '+CStr("customer"."account_num")
The above expression uses the VBA CStr
function to convert the account_num field to a string that we are able
to concatenate with the last and first names. While many other variations are
possible for presentation, the point of the example is to show that such
expressions can be accommodated within the Member Name Column field of
the Properties pane.
We can easily check the effects of
our work by using the Browse feature at the Customer dimension.
53.
Right-click the Customer
dimension in the cube tree.
54.
Select Browse from the
context menu, as shown below.
Illustration 45: Select Browse from the Context Menu
The Dimension
Browser window appears.
55.
Expand the All Customers level
to reveal the results of our Member Name Column expression, as partially
displayed in Illustration 46.
Illustration 46: Partial View of Expanded All Customer Level
56. Click the Close button on the Dimension
Browser when finished.
57. Drag the date_accnt_opened column from the
customer table onto the Member Properties folder underneath the
Account No level.
The Account No level
of the Customer dimension appears as shown in Illustration 47:
Illustration 47: Account No Level of the Customer Dimension
The addition of the
date to the level member properties will allow us to track the longevity of
customer accounts for reporting and browsing purposes.
Page 11: The Cube Editor (Continued)
See All Articles by Columnist William E. Pearson, III
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