Update Dependencies

Updating the value of a cell results in the updating of other dependent properties, such as FORMATTED_VALUE.

Whether or not dependent properties can be updated is provider specific. If they can be updated, it is provider-specific what happens to the determining property (such as VALUE) when a dependent property (such as FORMATTED_VALUE) is updated. For clearer semantics, providers are encouraged to make dependent properties read-only. The OLE DB for OLAP specification does not mandate which properties are dependent on which other properties.

Updating a cell (in other words, the corresponding row in the range rowset) that has an atomic value results in changes to all aggregates based on that cell.

Updating Aggregate Cells

When updating a cell in an aggregated dataset, behavior varies among providers. That is, what happens to the cells that combine to create the aggregate is provider-specific. For example, all cells with the coordinate Qtr1 on the Time dimension are aggregate cells because they depend on cells with a month as a coordinate (January, February, and so forth).

Some providers do not allow updates on nonatomic cells. Other providers allow a nonatomic cell to be updated, but they do not change the value of atomic cells beneath the nonatomic cell.

The property MDPROP_AGGREGATECELL_UPDATE can be used by the consumer to determine whether or not a provider supports updating nonatomic cells. If it does, the property also can yield more information about a provider's behavior when such a cell is updated.