About the Series …
This is the fifth article of the
series, MDX Essentials. The primary focus of this series is an
introduction to the MDX language. The series is designed to provide hands-on
application of the fundamentals of the Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) language,
with each tutorial progressively adding features designed to meet specific
real-world needs.
For more information about the series in general, as well as
the software and systems requirements needed for getting the most out of the lessons
included, please see the first article, MDX at
First Glance: Introduction to MDX Essentials.
Note: Beginning with this lesson, Service
Pack 3 updates are assumed for MSSQL Server 2000, MSSQL Server
2000 Analysis Services, and the related Books Online and Samples.
What We Accomplished in our Last Article
In the fourth
article of the series, MDX
Members: Introducing Members and Member Functions, we introduced the concept of members, and discussed
their pervasive significance within MDX. In an article that served to launch
the series’ first discreet group of articles, Member Functions, we began our exploration of the powerful .Members operator. Our exposure of this robust and highly
useful operator included a discussion of the syntax within which we can best
employ it; we then illustrated some of its uses within MDX expressions through
practice exercises.
In this lesson, we
continue the multiple-article Member Functions segment that
focuses upon the member functions (and operators, as appropriate) one at
a time, contrasting the uses and effects of each. Specifically, we will expose
the .Parent, .Children and Ancestor() functions,
discussing the information they return, together with syntactical points
surrounding their use. We will illustrate further how to take advantage of
these useful functions by performing practice exercises, and commenting on the
result datasets we obtain.
