Attribute Discretization: Customize Grouping Names - Page 4

July 17, 2009

Procedure: Employ the Naming Template to Support Custom Attribute Group Naming for Attribute Members in Analysis Services

The client representatives with whom we are working state that they are pleased with the overall results, but then they make one further request: they tell us that they would prefer that each of the “buckets” we have created to group the Vacation Hours be assigned a more explicit label. They tell us that they would rather that the label be “beefed up” to include more explanatory verbiage – in accordance the following example:

Instead of:

“0 - 8”

they would rather see:

“8 & Under”

and, for all members of the “intermediate ranges,” instead of, say,

“9 - 19”

They would rather see:

“Between 9 & 19 hours (incl)”.

Moreover, instead of

“90 - 99”

they would rather see:

“90 & Over”

We inform our client colleagues that Analysis Services generates member group names automatically when it creates the groups, based upon a default naming template, which is used unless we specify another naming template within the Format setting for the NameColumn property of an attribute, as we shall see. A separate naming template can be defined for each language specified in the Translations collection of the respective column underlying the NameColumn property of the attribute.

The Format setting uses the following string expression to define the naming template:

<Naming template> ::= <First definition> [;<Intermediate definition>;<Last definition>]

<First definition> ::= <Name expression>

<Intermediate defintion> ::= <Name expression>

<Last definition> ::= <Name expression>

The <First definition> parameter applies only to the first (or only, if there is only one) member group generated by the discretization method. If the optional parameters <Intermediate definition> and <Last definition> are not provided, the <First definition> parameter is used for all member groups generated for that attribute.

The <Last definition> parameter applies only to the last member group generated by the discretization method. The <Intermediate bucket name> parameter applies to every member group other than the first or last member group generated by the discretization method. (If two or fewer member groups are generated, this parameter is ignored.) The <Bucket name> parameter is a string expression that can incorporate a set of variables to represent member or member group information as part of the name of the member group, as presented in Table 1 below:

Use the Naming Template to Support Custom Attribute Group Naming

Let’s put what we have learned to work to help our client colleagues reach their objectives in providing more descriptive names for Employee Vacation Hours.

We note that the NameColumn setting is empty, leaving us to conclude that the member names are being derived from the KeyColumns setting.

The DataItem Collection Editor appears.

%{Last Bucket member} & Under; Between %{First Bucket member} & %{Last Bucket member} (incl); %{First Bucket member} & Over

An example of the intended output of each of the three delimited sections in our syntax above is presented in Table 2 below.

Our syntax partially appears within the Format property box of the DataItem Collection Editor as shown (modifications surrounded by the red box) in Illustration 21.

We are now ready to process the Analysis Services database, and then to examine the results of our handiwork with the browsers, as before.

Process the Analysis Services Database to Update for Our Custom Attribute Group Names

We will process the Analysis Services database within which we have been working, as we did earlier, and then browse the Vacation Hours attribute members, once again to confirm that we have adequately provided support for the custom naming requirements that our client colleagues have requested.

Information updates on the server, and then the Process Database dialog appears.

The Process Progress viewer appears, and generates periodic status updates for various processing events, as we noted earlier. When processing is complete, we see a Process succeeded message appear in the Status bar in the lower part of the viewer, once again.

We are now ready to return to the Dimension Designer browser to examine the results of our handiwork.

Browse the Newly Named Attribute Groups with the Dimension Browser

The browser details update, and (assuming the All Employees level remains expanded in the browser), we see ten groups appear, as depicted in Illustration 22.

We see the groups appear, as expected. Moreover, we note that the ten groups created by Analysis Services via the Automatic Discretization method, display the names in the format requested by the client representatives with which we have been working.