Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Grouping Multiple Dimensions?

We use Excel 2007 as our front end to our AS2005 cube. Is there a way to group/display multiple dimensions under a single area? I know that you can use Display folders with measures.

Are you wanting to have a folder displayed under which attributes from multiple dimensions are displayed, or are you just wanting attributes from multiple dimensions displayed on an axis of your pivot table?

B.

|||Hi Brian,

The former. I'd like to have a folder or section where attributes from multiple dimensions can be displayed in a group. For example, let's say I have a Products dimension with a Product Line attribute and a Ship Node dimension with a Ship Node Name attribute. I'd like to have the Product Line and Ship Node attributes under a grouping or displayed in a section called "xxx" so users would just navigate to "xxx" in the Field List to find the aforementioned attributes. Does that make sense? And is that possible in Excel 2007?
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When you pull data from an OLAP cube directly into Excel 2007, it gives the option of generating a Pivot Table or a Pivot Table & Chart. Either way, you get that field list on the side of the window that organizes everything the way it is organized in the cube.

I am not aware of an easy way to alter this. One thing that comes to mind is possibly connecting directly to the relational data warehouse that feeds to cube (but this would require you to by-pass SSAS security). But then, everything would be jumbled.

Another would be to have an SSRS report with a single table of the elements you want and then call the report's URL with rendering instructions for either CSV or XML (or just have the report generate an XLS and open that yourself) and then generating a pivot table off the Excel data set. Still, I can't really see going into production with the SSRS solutoin.

B.

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Hello! I do not think it is possible.

Actually I have created named sets with crossjoin of two separate dimensions like product and customer in AS2005 and the previous version. It is possible to build them on the server, but the problem is that no client I have seen, like ProClarity Professional, will show them(and support them). These sets(or attributes from different dimensions) are not supported in any client that I know about. They will not show up in dimension tools in clients.

Since I do not now about every client on the market I can be wrong.

HTH

Thomas Ivarsson

|||Thanks for the input Brian and Thomas! I'll give it to the rest of the day to see if I can come up with anything.

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