Is it possible to have text measures in SSAS tabular? - ssas

The question pretty much sums it up.
I am creating a model that involves textual status information on some processes. I would like to show these as text but cant for the life of me figure out how.
Tried FirstNonBlank(textualcolumn, 1) without luck. Anyone know if this is possible?

Rather than having a text measure physically in any fact table I would suggest you to go for calculated measure. As per your post the measure has to represent some process status (I suppose Open or closed), you can easily write a MDX expression for the calculated measure.

Related

SSAS cube - ordering of measures and dimensions

I have inherited several cubes and have learned a bit through doing maintenance and updates to the cubes. One thing I don't understand is "ordering" for measures and dimensions. I use Visual Studio 2015 and 2017 in case it matters. In the dsv, the named queries are all listed in alphabetical order which is perfect. In the cube, however, the Measures and Dimensions are not shown in alphabetical order, and I also don't see an option to sort. Why is that? I have tried to find an answer, and it seems to be to manually drag things into the desired order. But every website I find that says this also has this cryptic statement: "The order will affect how certain client applications order these measures." Does anyone know what "certain client applications" refers to? Am I going to cause trouble for myself if I move the Measures and Dimensions around so they are in alphabetical order? There are a lot of dimensions, which is why I want to do this -- I waste so much time manually looking through the list of Dimensions (there are > 70), trying to find the one I want.
The cube also has many calculations (>60), which are also not ordered. Similar question there: could it be problematic if I change the ordering there?
The cube is used by Excel users as well as by dashboards.
Update: It's been many months now since I manually reordered my cube measures and dimensions. I have found no ill effects, even with calculations, and it makes it much easier to find things. To answer the question "why," it's because my cube has 13 measure groups and about 90 dimensions, and it makes it easier for me to find things while doing active development. Yes, the ordering is automatic for Excel users but it's not automatic for developers.

Impact of creating calculated fields in Workday

What is the impact of creating calculated fields in Workday
Will it make Workday slower, if this is slower how we can avoid to make some changes specially for integration ?
Is it better to have a report based calculated fields. If Yes, then will it impact on the report only ?
Is Workday doesn't calculated field OR they have any special recommendation on this ?
Asif
It, the calculated field, doesn't make Workday as a whole slower, not in any noticeable way anyway. If your calculated fields are complex, that can sometimes make the report run slower. Try using report filters when you can if you find the calculated field slowing things up. It's possible a lot of long running reports might slow your system down some; you can contact Workday for that question.
As far as report based calculated fields vs global calculated fields: only use the global calculated fields if you think you will reuse them in more than one report, otherwise, use the report calculated fields. Make sure you have a good naming convention for your calculated fields; the more you have, it can get hard to keep track of them all. But whether your calculated field is report-based or global, they both perform the same way, one isn't slower than the other.
Report performance is not based on calculated fields. It completely depends on the Datasource and business object you are using within the report.
Report running performance is completely depends on the Datasource and business object what we using in Report. But sometimes we will create calculated field to fetch specific data instead of changing datasource or business object. During this time performance will affect.
Maximum we need to give importance to use workday delivered field.
Check Report run time for various Business Object and Datasource
Try to use indexed datasource
consider or try to use Optimized Performance check box for choosing BO or Datasource while creating report

MDX / SSAS - Need flexible percent of parent measure

I’ve been searching for hours on this and I’m just not adept enough at MDX to know if I’ve come across the solution yet. Everything I tried has not worked. The situation is, I need a “percent of parent” measure. In this example, the only thing I have gotten to work, each product code attribute displayed shows it’s sales as a percentage of every other product code attribute displayed:
([Product].[Product Code].CURRENTMEMBER,
[Measures].[Sales]) / ([Product].[Product Code].CURRENTMEMBER.PARENT,
[Measures].[Sales])
The problem is when the users start dragging other dimensions in or other attributes not in that hierarchy, or don’t use the product code attribute, it stops working and I get #NUM! values. Is there anyway to do a better percent of parent measure that’s more flexible? I really need something like a “percent of what’s visible” measure, ideally not dependent on a single dimension.
unfortunately I can't provide a fully working example due to the lack of my laptop during my vacation :-)
What you're looking for can be achieved with the MDX functions AXIS and ITEM. Within this book
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Server-Analysis-Services-Cookbook/dp/1849681309/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372255356&sr=8-1&keywords=tomislav+piasevoli
there is a dedicated chapter about "Context-Aware Calculations"
Hope this helps somehow
Tom

Cube is already deployed, need to update friendly names in DSV, how to push those updates into the cube?

So, as the title reads I need to update the friendly names of attributes and measures in the datasourceview (DSV). I have done so which is fairly straightforward. The problem I am now running into is getting these changes into the cube. I have tried deploying the cube, processing the dimensions, processing the cube. (I have tried all of these in numerous sequences)
I would think that this would be something that happens a lot. I can't believe that one would have to create a new cube each time friendly names are changed.
Ok, I completely overlooked this you deploy/process your cube. Then you have to go into the tab cube structure. Delete your old measure or attribute and add the newly named one in its place. If you have a better way of doing this please let me know.

Trace back columns in calculated measures

How do I trace back the actual columns used/joined in calculated measure? THe reason I am asking this question is, I am trying to write the equivalent TSQL query to verify the result with that of calculated measure.
So far, my approach has been a look up into the measure properties and find the table/view and the column name used. The joining column has been a difficult part (let s say it impossible for me), because the DSV looks very messy and is hard to follow the lines.
Any suggestions appreciated!
I suppose there is no hope of contacting the person who created the cube, or currently maintains it? If you are not familiar with the data warehouse the cube comes from, I can see why this would feel like a nightmare. There may be various procs/jobs which load data in.
One on-going problem in my last job was a customer upset that the cube totals did not match with the figures from other places in our web application. Each week there would be a debate between the OLAP team and the web team, to decide which value ws "right" and how we could explain the difference!