Hi all,

I have the following question:

I have a cube with a Time Filter dimension which consists of several calculated members containing functions like the YTD() and ParallelPeriod() functions.
Besides this dimension there is a standard date dimension. Users complain that when they select multiple months (say may and june) from the date dimension and they have used the calculated member with the ParallelPeriod function in the view, the column dissapears from the view.

Analysing the ParallelPeriod functions reveals that it uses a member (the dimension or Time.currentmember) so when selecting multiple months doesn't make sence because which members should be taken? So in my opinion the users see a correct result. But their perception is that they should see the result of the parallelperiod from multiple months. Can this be done?

Q

Hi,

I did some further investigation on the problem and I discovered that when the user is selecting multiple members from the time dimension (e.g. may and june) a calculated members is created as:

WITH MEMBER [Time].[001] As 'Sum({[Time].[Year].&[2004].&[2].&[6],[Time].[Year].&[2004].&[2].&[5]})', SolveOrder = '-5'

When I remove the solveorder the calculated members with the functions like ParallelPeriod and YTD do not dissapear. Why is this?

Q

"Qbee" wrote:

Greetings

By design MDX doesn't allow for multiple selections on the slicer axis (e.g.
the WHERE clause in a MDX SELECT statement).

However what MDX gives you, is the ability to define calculated member on
any dimension (measures, time, etc.), and to use that calculated member as a
slicer; hence, many OLAP client tools automatically use a system-generated
calculated member to agregates a user's multiple selections on a filtering
axis. So the tool does'nt have to 'choose ' which member to use because it
actually uses the aggregate of all members (in your case, [Time].[001]).

The calculated members are evaluated sequencially using the SOLVE ORDER
property (the lower the value, the earlier the member gets evaluated); if
you remove this value you can theorically not predict when the evaluation is
going to happen.

So my guess is, your server-side calculations on the Time Filter either
return either an error or a Null value when they are evaluated against your
client-side, automatically generated calculation on the regular Time
dimension because Time.CurrentMember either returns an error, or more
probably a member a period in the past that contains no values or that doest
not even exist. Depending on how your client tool handles errors and empty
values (check the hide empty rows/columns propeties for instance), this
could explain why the column 'disappears' from the report.

HTH


Olivier MATRAT

WINSIGHT
Microsoft Gold Partner for Business Intelligence
www.winsight.fr


"Qbee" <Qbee (AT) discussions (DOT) microsoft.com> wrote

june) a calculated members is created as:
SolveOrder = '-5'
functions.
date dimension and they have used the calculated member with the
ParallelPeriod function in the view, the column dissapears from the view.
doesn't make sence because which members should be taken? So in my opinion
the users see a correct result. But their perception is that they should see
the result of the parallelperiod from multiple months. Can this be done?