IBM Cognos Dynamic Cubes

Chapter 4. Modeling dynamic cubes 73

Figure 4-8 shows an example of sorting members.

Figure 4-8 Sorting members

You can define a member description. It is an optional role. In the Cognos studios this

attribute will be displayed in the metadata tree.

An attribute is a property of an entity that provides information about the entity. A simple

attribute might be a column from a table. You can create attributes that have expressions in

them. For example, you can create an expression that concatenates the values of two

columns. Some attributes are necessary for defining the level key and member caption.

Attributes are displayed in the metadata trees of those Cognos Studios that support them.

They appear as children of the level. All attributes appear except for the member caption and

level key attributes. Two attributes that do not appear in the level are displayed also:

򐂰 One is the member description. If you have set it in Cognos Cube Designer, this attribute

displays the member description text. If not, it displays empty cells.

򐂰 The second generated attribute will have the business key value. Its name is in the

following form:

{Level name} – Key

You can use the attributes to help filter reports by values that are in the attributes. For

example, you may use a product color attribute to filter a report to return values only for those

products that are red.

4.3.3 Member tree organization options

The (All) level is a container for a member that acts as a parent to the members of the

highest level of a hierarchy. It exists in a hierarchy that has the multi-root property value set as

false. If the multi-root value is set as true, no (All) level exists in the hierarchy. The highest

level members display as the parents in the member tree or metadata tree member folder.

The (All) level has a default value in English of (All). It can be named anything and can

have any name for any locale.

The name of the member that is in the (All) level is set in the root member property. It is

sometimes referred to as the ALL member.

74 IBM Cognos Dynamic Cubes

The effect of the existence of the (All) member is illustrated here. Time (ship date), for the

purposes of illustration, had its multiple root members property value set to true. Time

retains the (All) level. As you can see, the member tree for Time will have the root member

generated.

Figure 4-9 shows the member tree organization.

Figure 4-9 Member tree organization

Figure 4-10 shows ALL member tree.

Figure 4-10 ALL member tree