Friday, February 17, 2012

Drilldown on Related measures: Calculations in DSV

Hi,

I have a strange requirement, although there is a workaround that I have thought about , it quite does not satisfy what I need. Here is the scenario:

I have about 200 calculations (basic arthimetic with maximum of 10 members). I have created them in the DSV as named calculations. The calculations involve other members of the DSV. We tried using calculated members but the performance became slow, because the user always has to see only the calculated values first.

The requirement is that, the users first see the calculated values, over different dimensions and dates. When the user wants to verify as to how a paticular calculated value was arrived, then he should be able to sort of drill down into the members that made up that calculated member. The users want to see this inline, like clicking on '+' expands the lower levels.

example: if a named calculation 'c' has a formula a+b then when user clicks on the 'c' cell or right clicks (whatever) it should show that c is made up of a+b and also the values of a and b for the corresponding dimensions being viewed.

my approach: I used drillthrough actions to achieve this, but the problem with drillthorugh actions is that it displays all actions for all cells, The user has to select the specific action for that cell. and in Proclarity (standard) the actions are displayed in the left navigation tab. not in the grid. (actually i have a problem with proclarity web standard and drillthrough actions, its in a other post)

1. I have read that we can have a general drillthrough action which targets similar common query subspace, but will we get the specific rows that make up the final value for all drillthorugh's. please do explain how to accomplish this. and how to identify a common query subspace.

2. Is there any other way to relate measures. can we create a dummy dimension that realtes the measures, so that they can be browsed using drill-down and drill-up kind of feature.

3. I have a drillthrough created which works with a set of dimension attributes, if I browse this drillthrough action with a new attribute added to the set, the drillthrough action does not return any rows. why is this?. Since I am only adding a attribute of the same dimension whose attributes are already there in the drillthrough return, should it not return the same rows as before? should I add this attribute in the return statement? but what if I dont want to see it in the return? but it is there while browsing?

Regards and thanks

What about creating a separate dimension to represent the hierarchy of named calculations - custom member formulii can be added, to override default aggregation behavior as necessary?

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174474.aspx

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SQL Server 2005 Books Online

Working with Custom Member Formulas

You can define a Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) expression, called a custom member formula, to supply the values for the members of a specified attribute. A column in a table from a data source view provides, for each member in an attribute, the expression used to supply the value for that member.

Custom member formulas determine the cell values that are associated with members and override the aggregate functions of measures. Custom member formulas are written in MDX. Each custom member formula applies to a single member. Custom member formulas are stored in the dimension table or in another table that has a foreign key relationship with the dimension table.

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Hi,

I have not tried this nor hear about it before.

Is it calculated measures?

where in BI studio can I create this.

I have to try this.

Thanks and Regards

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Hi,

I gave a bried reading about custom member formulas.

This is for attributes of a dimension, where you can create a custom attribute with an mdx expression pointing to a dsv table, right?

but I need this for fact members, I mean for measures.

my fact will be look like this:

fact:

measure 1

measure 2

calcMeasure3 = measure1 + measure 2

calcMeasure4 = measure2 / 5.0

when users browse, they have to see only calcMeasure3 and calcMeasure4. if they want to see more details, they would want to click/right click on calcMeasure3 to see measure1 and measure2 (because calcMeasure3 is measure1 + measure2).

How can I use custom memer formulas for this scenario? can you please explain for the above example?

I am kind of confused now.

thanks and regards

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My idea is to add a parent-child dimension like DimCustomMeasures. The dim table would have fields: MeasureID, ParentID, MDXFormula. For the example above, the rows could be like (without using named calculations in fact table):

"All Measures", (Null), "[Measures].CurrentMember"

"calcMeasure3", "All Measures", "[Measures].[measure1] + [Measures].[measure2]"

"calcMeasure4", "All Measures", "[Measures].[measure2] / 5.0"

"calcMeasure3.measure1", "calcMeasure3", "[Measures].[measure1]"

"calcMeasure3.measure2", "calcMeasure3", "[Measures].[measure2]"

calcMeasure4.measure2", "calcMeasure4", "[Measures].[measure2]"

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Hi,

Thanks,

I will try this out.

just trying to understand a little more........

will this ( "calcMeasure3", "All Measures", "[Measures].[measure1] + [Measures].[measure2]") show both the resultant measures?

I mean it should show values for both measure1 and measure 2. (not the added value for them, since this is already avaliable in the calcMeasure3)

Its like the user wants to know what values made up to the calcMeasure3.

So if the user browses this on a higher level of granularity, then the resultant should be many rows of measure1 , measure2 values.

I hope I am able to put out the requirement correctly?

Regards

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