Putting data on x and y axes

Cube space in SSAS is multi-dimensional. MDX allows you to display results on axes from 0, 1, and 2, up to 128. The first five axes have aliases: COLUMNS, ROWS, PAGES, SECTIONS, and CHAPTERS. However, the frontend tools such as SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) or other applications that you can use for writing and executing MDX queries only have two axes, the x and y axes, or COLUMNS and ROWS.

As a result, we have two tasks to do when trying to fit the multi-dimensional data onto the limited axes in our frontend tool:

  • We must always explicitly specify a display axis for all elements in the SELECT list. We can use aliases for the first five axes: COLUMNS, ROWS, PAGES, SECTIONS, and CHAPTERS. We are also allowed to ...

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