Introduction to MSSQL Server 2000 Analysis Services: Reporting Options for Analysis Services Cubes: ProClarity Professional, Part I - Page 4

Let's say that we have a need to compare Information Systems (IS) Cost between the Stores located in California. We also want to view this information specifically for 1997 (the default year). Let's walk through the process of doing the appropriate additional drills to meet our needs.

The resulting view appears in Illustration 13.

It is at Level 4 of the Account dimension hierarchy that we can distinguish the break out of IS Cost, along with the other components of what is known as Total Expense at the Level 3 rollup. We have attained our goal of "narrowing our beam" to focus upon IS Cost.

Now we need to drill the other related dimensions to the appropriate levels to meet the business need we have proposed. ProClarity makes this drill down, even in other dimensions, easy to accomplish, while allowing us to "maintain our bead" on IS Cost from the Account dimension perspective.

We note that, while Account no longer appears as an option for selection in the first cascading context menu that emerges (we are already at the bottom of the Account dimension hierarchy for the Budget cube structure), we can select the Category, Store, or Time dimensions from our current position.

We will select Store next (Category is somewhat irrelevant, as only one Category, Current Year's Actuals, exists in the Budget cube structure for 1997.

The Store States appear. They will be in compact formation, if the window is significantly less than maximized. Make sure the window is maximized to gain a complete perspective of how ProClarity is visually representing the decompositions as we request them going forward.

The full perspective is presented in Illustration 14.

We note that all states appear. We will narrow the presentation to focus upon the California stores, to meet the requirement we outlined earlier.

We see the five California stores appear, as shown in Illustration 15.

We have met the objective of narrowing our focus, within the context of IS Cost, to the California stores. Because the Time (already in year 1997, by default) and Category (defaulted as the Current Year's Actual category, because it is the only category that existed in 1997) dimensions are intersected to meet our stated goal, we can now perform analysis on the California stores with regard to IS Cost. The Decomposition Tree view provides an excellent presentation of the precise drill-down path we have taken, and clearly highlights the significance of each box / member of the chain, to make the allocation of "shares" of the IS Cost component of Total Expense intuitive to the reader. As we noted earlier, more information can be obtained with a simple mouse rollover of any box that the analyst feels a need to examine more closely.

Let's save our work at this stage.

We receive a warning message box, informing us that books need to contain at least a page. The Warning message box appears in Illustration 16.

The Add to Briefing Book dialog appears, offering a default name. I chose to rename the book to a shorter title, as shown in Illustration 17.

The Save Briefing Book As ... dialog closes, and we return to the page where we left it before the save procedure.

At this stage, we will look at some of the visualization options that abound in ProClarity.