Next, let's
verify that the Reseller Sales Information Drillthrough Action is
available for non-Accessories Categories.
23. In the Reseller Sales Amount
column, once again, this time to the immediate right of the Bikes Category
for Jillian Carson, right-click the cell containing the value.
The context menu that
appears this time contains our new Reseller Sales Information Action,
(along with the Reseller Details Action previously noted), as shown in Illustration 14.
Illustration 14: The
Reseller Sales Information Action is Available ...
This
appears to confirm that our new Drillthrough Action is available for the
selected Reseller Sales Amount value, as we intended.
24. Finally, right-click the Reseller
Order Quantity value, in the cell to the immediate right of the Reseller
Sales Amount column we currently occupy.
Our new Drillthrough
Action, Reseller Sales Information, appears, once again. We have
therefore verified that the availability requirement for the Action
we have created is met. At this point, we will verify the operation of the new
Drillthrough Action by initiating a drillthrough from our current
position.
25. Click Reseller Sales
Information on the context menu.
Our click initiates a Drillthrough
Action, upon the Reseller Order Quantity recorded for the Bikes
Product Category, for the third Calendar Quarter of 2001.
We experience a brief
pause (the duration of which, unsurprisingly, depends upon machine resources
and other factors), and then the Data Sample Viewer appears, as depicted
in Illustration 15.
Illustration 15: The Data
Sample Viewer Appears
A close examination of
the Data Sample
Viewer reveals that
the columns it contains match those we specified within the Drillthrough Columns table on the Cube Designer
Actions tab earlier.
We verify, therefore,
that our efforts to meet the requirements of our client colleagues have been
successful.
26. Click Close to dismiss the
Data Sample Viewer.
27. Further inspect the availability
and operation of the Reseller Sales Information Drillthrough Action, performing
additional browses, as desired.
28. Select File --> Save All from the main menu, to save our
work through this point, as shown in Illustration 16.
Illustration 16: Saving All Work
from Our Session
29. Select File --> Exit, when ready, to leave the Business
Intelligence Development Studio.
Conclusion
In this article, we
explored Drillthrough Actions, a new and improved means of analyzing the
values that make up the aggregations presented within our Analysis Services
cubes. Our focus upon the Drillthrough Action included an introduction to its
features, capabilities and possible uses. We then obtained some hands-on
exposure to this new Action type, creating a Drillthrough Action within the
sample AdventureWorks development environment that can be installed with
MSSQL Server 2005.
As a part of our practical
examination of the Drillthrough Action, after an overview of its uses
and the data it presents, we focused upon the use of an MDX Condition
expression to restrict its availability within the Cube Browser, and, by
extension, within client applications which a Drillthrough Action might
be created to support. Having concluded an examination of the settings
involved in creating our working Drillthrough Action, we verified,
within the Cube Browser, the effectiveness of the new Drillthrough
Action, from the tandem perspectives of availability of the Action
and operation of the Action, in meeting the business
requirements of a hypothetical client.
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