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Defining and Configuring Dimension Attributes

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In Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services (SSAS), there are many properties that determine how dimensions and dimension attributes function. The following table lists and describes each of these attribute properties.

Property Description

AttributeHierarchyDisplayFolder

Identifies the folder in which to display the associated attribute hierarchy to end users.

AttributeHierarchyEnabled

Determines whether an attribute hierarchy is generated by Analysis Services for the attribute. If the attribute hierarchy is not enabled, then the attribute cannot be used in a user-defined hierarchy, nor can the attribute hierarchy be referenced in Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) statements.

AttributeHierarchyOptimizedState

Determines the level of optimization applied to the attribute hierarchy. By default, an attribute hierarchy is fully optimized, which means that Analysis Services builds indexes for the attribute hierarchy to improve query performance. The other option, NotOptimized, means that no indexes are built for the attribute hierarchy. This is useful if the attribute hierarchy is not used for querying, but is used for another purpose, such as ordering of another attribute hierarchy.

AttributeHierarchyOrdered

Determines whether the associated attribute hierarchy is ordered. The default value is True. However, if an attribute hierarchy will not be used for querying, you can save processing time by changing the value of this property to False.

AttributeHierarchyVisible

Determines whether the attribute hierarchy is visible to client applications. The default value is True. However, if the attribute hierarchy is not used for querying but for another purpose, such as ordering of another attribute hierarchy, you can save processing time by changing the value of this property to False.

CustomRollupColumn

Specifies the column that defines a custom rollup formula.

CustomRollupPropertiesColumn

Specifies the column that contains the properties of a custom rollup formula.

DefaultMember

Specifies a Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) expression that defines the default member for the attribute.

Description

Contains the description of the attribute.

DiscretizationBucketCount

Contains the number of buckets into which to discretize.

DiscretizationMethod

Defines the method to be used for discretization.

EstimatedCount

Specifies the estimated number of members in the attribute. This value defaults to zero, until you run the Aggregation Design Wizard. You can either allow the wizard to count the number of records or you can enter an estimated value. Enter a value manually if you know the number and want to save the time it takes to query the database for the count. If you are working with a test subset of your production data, you can use the counts of your production data so that the aggregation design will be optimized for the production data rather than for the test data.

GroupingBehavior

Provides a hint to client applications.

ID

Contains the unique identifier (ID) of the dimension.

InstanceSelection

Provides a hint to client applications about how a list of items should be displayed, based on the expected number of items in the list. Default value is none. The available options are:

  • DropDown   The number of items is small enough to display in a dropdown list.
  • List   The number of items is too large for a dropdown list, but does not require filtering.
  • FilteredList   The number of items is large enough to require users to filter the items to be displayed.
  • MandatoryFilter   The number of items is so large that the display must always be filtered.

IsAggregatable

Specifies whether the values of the attribute members can be aggregated. The default value is True, which means that the attribute hierarchy contains an (All) level. If the value for this property is False, the attribute hierarchy does not contain an (All) level.

KeyColumns

Contains the column or columns that constitute the key for the attribute, which is the column in the underlying relational table in the data source view to which the attribute is bound. The value of this column for each member is displayed to users unless a value is specified for the NameColumn property.

MemberNamesUnique

Determines whether member names in the attribute hierarchy must be unique.

MembersWithData

Used by parent attributes to determine whether to display data members for non-leaf members in the parent attribute. This property value is only used when the value of the Usage property is set to Parent, meaning that a parent-child hierarchy has been defined.

MembersWithDataCaption

Provides a template string that is used by parent attributes to create captions for system-generated data members in the parent attribute. This property value is only used when the value of the Usage property is set to Parent, meaning that a parent-child hierarchy has been defined.

Name

Contains the user-friendly name of the attribute.

NameColumn

Identifies the column that provides the name of the attribute that is displayed to users, rather than the value in the key column for the attribute. This column is used to display a user-friendly column to users when the key column value for an attribute member is cryptic or not otherwise useful to the user, or when the key column is based on a composite key. The NameColumn property is not used in parent-child hierarchies; rather, the NameColumn property for child members is used as the member names in a parent-child hierarchy.

NamingTemplate

Defines how levels are named in a parent-child hierarchy constructed from the parent attribute. This property value is only used when the value of the Usage property is set to Parent, meaning that a parent-child hierarchy has been defined.

OrderBy

Describes how to order the members contained in the attribute hierarchy. The default value is Name, which specifies that ordering of the attribute members is based on the value of the NameColumn property, if any; otherwise. members are ordered by the value of the key column. Other values are:

  • Name    Order by the value of the NameColumn property.
  • Key    Order by the value of the key column of the attribute member.
  • AttributeKey    Order by the value of the member key of a specified attribute, which must have an attribute relationship to the attribute.
  • AttributeName    Order by the value of the member name of a specified attribute, which must have an attribute relationship to the attribute.

OrderByAttribute

Identifies the attribute by which to order the members of the attribute hierarchy.

RootMemberIf

Determines how the root or topmost members of a parent-child hierarchy are identified. This property value is only used when the value of the Usage property is set to Parent, meaning that a parent-child hierarchy has been defined. The default value is ParentIsBlankSelfOrMissing, which means that only members that meet one or more of the conditions described for ParentIsBlank, ParentIsSelf, or ParentIsMissing are treated as root members. The following values are also available:

  • ParentIsBlank    Only members with a null, a zero, or an empty string in the key column or columns are treated as root members.
  • ParentIsSelf    Only members with themselves as parents are treated as root members.
  • ParentIsMissing    Only members with parents that cannot be found are treated as root members.

Type

Contains the type of the attribute. For more information, see Configuring Attribute Types.

UnaryOperatorColumn

Specifies the column that provides unary operators.

Usage

Describes how an attribute is used. The default value is Regular. Other available values are Key and Parent.

ValueColumn

Identifies the column that provides the value of the attribute. If the NameColumn element of the attribute is specified, the same DataItem values are used as default values for the ValueColumn element. If the NameColumn element of the attribute is not specified and the KeyColumns collection of the attribute contains a single KeyColumn element representing a key column with a string data type, the same DataItem values are used as default values for the ValueColumn element.

Note

For more information about setting values for the KeyColumn property when working with null values and other data integrity issues, see Handling Data Integrity Issues in Analysis Services 2005.

See Also

Concepts

Attributes and Attribute Hierarchies

Help and Information

Getting SQL Server 2005 Assistance

Change History

Release History

12 December 2006
Changed content:
  • Clarified the behavior of the NameColumn property with parent-child hierarchies.