How to add column with the value of another dimension? - ssas

Question

I appologize if the title does not make sense. I am trying to do something that is probably simple, but I have not been able to figure it out, and I'm not sure how to search for the answer. I have the following MDX query:
SELECT
event_count ON 0,
TOPCOUNT(name.children, 10, event_count) ON 1
FROM
events
which returns something like this:
| | event_count |
+---------------+-------------+
| P Davis | 123 |
| J Davis | 123 |
| A Brown | 120 |
| K Thompson | 119 |
| R White | 119 |
| M Wilson | 118 |
| D Harris | 118 |
| R Thompson | 116 |
| Z Williams | 115 |
| X Smith | 114 |
I need to include an additional column (gender). Gender is not a metric. It's just another dimension on the data. For instance, consider this query:
SELECT
gender.children ON 0,
TOPCOUNT(name.children, 10, event_count) ON 1
FROM
events
But this is not what I want! :(
| | female | male | unknown |
+--------------+--------+------+---------+
| P Davis | | | 123 |
| J Davis | | 123 | |
| A Brown | | 120 | |
| K Thompson | | 119 | |
| R White | 119 | | |
| M Wilson | | | 118 |
| D Harris | | | 118 |
| R Thompson | | | 116 |
| Z Williams | | | 115 |
| X Smith | | | 114 |
Nice try, but I just want three columns: name, event_count, and gender. How hard can it be?
Obviously this reflects lack of understanding about MDX on my part. Any pointers to quality introductory material would be appreciated.

Answer 1

It's important to understand that in MDX you are building sets of members on each axis, and not specifying column names like a tabular rowset. You are describing a 2-dimensional grid of results, not a linear rowset. If you imagine each dimension as a table, the member set is the set of unique values from a single column in that table.
When you choose a Measure as the member (as in your first example), it looks as if you're selecting from a table, so it's easy to misunderstand. When you choose a Dimension, you get many members, and a cross-join between the rows and columns (which is sparse in this case because the names and genders are 1-to-1).
So, you could crossjoin these two dimensions on a single axis, and then filter out the null cells:
SELECT
event_count ON 0,
TOPCOUNT(
NonEmptyCrossJoin(name.children, gender.children),
10,
event_count) ON 1
FROM
events
Which should give you results that have a single column (event_count) and 10 rows, where each row is composed of the tuple (name, gender).
I hope that sets you on the right path, and please feel free to ask you want me to clarify.
For general introductory material, I think the book "MDX Solutions" is a good place to start:
http://www.amazon.ca/MDX-Solutions-Microsoft-Analysis-Services/dp/0471748080/

Answer 2

For an online MDX introductory material, you can have a look to this gentle introduction that presents the main MDX concepts.