Define Drill Through

1.   Enable the Define Drill Through check box option then click Next.

The Drill-Through Values dialog box appears.

In this dialog box, you will decide which further Fields to include in reports beyond the two you already chose as Members—i.e., the UnitPrice and Quantity Fields. This is a key concept: if the Extended Drill-Through feature is selected, you can show information about the underlying relational database—drilling through for this information, from PowerOLAP^® or Excel at run time—to show data that isn't part of the Cube logic (which, in the example, would be only UnitPrice and Quantity). This will, you will understand in the ensuing discussions, truly extend reporting capabilities.

2.   In this example, select the Discount Field; use the buttons in the center of the dialog box to move, delete selections.

The right-hand Drill-Through Columns will look as follows:

3.   Click Next.

The Relational Dimension Summary screen appears, encapsulating the choices you made in creating the Dimension—here, Measures.

4.   Click Finish to return to the Dimensions dialog box,
where the Dimension Measures is now listed.

Notes


Note that for the Measures dimension, the field names of the chosen fields will become the Member names of the Dimension—in this example, Quantity and UnitPrice. (For other Dimensions, the records contained in the fields will become the Member names.) Also be aware that the field names may not be as "obvious" as in this example—that is, rather than Quantity, the field name containing quantity figures in the Measures Table may be XYZ_Prod, or some other inscrutable name. Again, you must have some knowledge of the underlying tables.

The following illustration contains a schematic showing the succession of dialog boxes for the creation of the Measures and subsequent Dimensions, provided all checkboxes in the Define Members dialog box have been enabled (those indicated by the parenthetical "if checked" in the figure). Before proceeding to create a 2nd, then a 3rd Dimension, you can look it over. (You have already completed the top loop in the preceding steps, i.e., creation of the Measures dimension.) This schematic will be useful for future reference in your own production environment.

Sequence of dialogs for Dimension creation

Top loop shows sequence of dialogs for creation of the Measures dimension
Bottom loop shows sequence of dialogs for creation of the 2^nd Dimension and further

Please see succeeding topic:

• Creating succeeding Dimensions (2^nd Dimension).