Show items with no data on rows | SSAS , MDX - ssas

Question

Working on a task that required to bring all a dimension’s data to the Pivot Table(Excel Sheet) even if they are not related to the fact.
first I was able to do it by using the option “PivotTable Options” -> “Display” -> “Show items with no data on rows” from Excel. The problem here is that using this option is going to affect the other dimensions and the requirement is to only this work for the Student dimension only and the user doesn’t like to keep changing the option back every time. then I found this solution using SCOPE, below, but just like above I could not find an away to just have the scope ignore the logic if any other dimension added so the data does not get duplicated.
SCOPE ([Program].[Program Hierarchy].MEMBERS, [Measures].[Number of Students]);
THIS = IIF(ISEMPTY([Measures].[Number of Students]), 0, ([Measures].[Number of Students]));
END SCOPE;
So is there something that I can add the SCOPE above to just work in the program dimension and get ignore/ skip and work as normal if any other dimension added to the pivot table?
Any suggestion will be appreciated.

Answer 1

Lets suppose that for Dimension1 ,attribute1, and the attribute "Value 1", you had nothing in Fact, so this is removed from the result, now you forced Excel to display it by selecting the option. When you add another dimension's attribute lets say Dimension2.Attribute1, since "Value 1" had nothing in Fact, therefore Cube will not understand which value of of Dimension2.Attribute1 is to be displayed in front of Dimension1.Attribute1, therefore it will display all its values. So if we have 3 values in Dimension2, attribute 1 then "Value 1" will be repeated three times. Now with Excel you cannot solve the issue, however it might just be possible to write an MDX query that works.
Edit: Query Added.
The below sample query is based on AdventureWorks, the first sample shows that the result has some nulls, if i un-comment the "non-empty" all null values will vanish, go ahead try it.
select [Measures].[Internet Sales Amount] on columns,
--non empty
[Product].[Subcategory].[Subcategory]
on rows
from
[Adventure Works]
Result without non empty
Now lets add another dimension to the query. Notice that the null value for the first row(Bib-shorts) is now repeated for all values of the second dimension, Since cube has no way to determine which value to display.
select [Measures].[Internet Sales Amount] on columns,
--non empty
([Product].[Subcategory].[Subcategory],[Date].[Calendar Quarter of Year].[Calendar Quarter of Year])
on rows
from
[Adventure Works]
Result
Now the above result shows the issue you are facing. What we now need to do is whenever there is a null value we dont need the individual members of the second dimension, rather a place holder to satisfy the tuple, will work.
In the query below I have two tuples
1) for the not null data-points. Here we display the actual member of the second dimension.
2) for the null data-points, here we use ".defaultmember" which basically means that the second dimension will behave as it was never selected. Have a close look at the second dimension it says "All Period"
select [Measures].[Internet Sales Amount] on columns,
--non empty
{filter(([Product].[Subcategory].[Subcategory],[Date].[Calendar Quarter of Year].[Calendar Quarter of Year]),[Measures].[Internet Sales Amount]>0),
filter(([Product].[Subcategory].[Subcategory],[Date].[Calendar Quarter of Year].defaultmember),[Measures].[Internet Sales Amount]=null)
}
on rows
from
[Adventure Works]
Result: