MDX Essentials: Member Functions: More "Family" Functions - Page 5

April 21, 2003

The .FirstSibling Function

The .FirstSibling function is a bit more confusing than .FirstChild to some who are new to MDX, mainly in the way that it works for the first child of a given member-parent, but it may help again to relate the concept to a "family" scenario. As we discussed in the introductory section for this article, the .FirstSibling (as well as the .LastSibling) function operates within a "horizontal" scope for the hierarchy involved. It effectively "travels" within the same level of the hierarchy ("across" versus "up and down," as it does in the case of the .FirstChild and .LastChild functions.

Illustration 11 below depicts the relationships between the members and levels under consideration, as shown below:

The possibly confusing characteristic lies the fact that the first child (Q1 in the example illustrated above) also fills the role of first sibling - it is "first" within the horizontal level, and is the first sibling of any member residing at the same level. This is an ordering concept, and becomes straightforward once the meaning is clear. To amplify the concept with another illustration, let's examine the relationships when we consider the first sibling of Q3, as shown in Illustration 12 below.

We see in the illustration above that the first sibling of Q3 is Q1 - the first member in the level, plain and simple.

Syntax

The .FirstSibling function is affixed to the right of the member, as in the following illustration:

<member>.FirstSibling

A basic example of the .FirstSibling function in action follows:

SELECT
{[Time].[Year].[1997].[Q2].FirstSibling} ON COLUMNS
FROM [Warehouse]
WHERE [Measures].[Units Ordered]

The dataset returned would appear as shown in Illustration 13 below: