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Business Intelligence to the Masses

Ordering Hierarchies

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toddchitt Posted: Thu, Jul 19 2007 10:51 AM

Hello,

I am going through the book, developing my cubes and dimensions using the methods described for the sample.  I created several hierarchies for a Dimension and specifically order them so that the most common one is at the top/left of the others.

From page 125/126: "Ordering Hierarchies": The position order (left to right), in which the hierarchies are placed in the Hierarchies and Levels mane, is significant. The first hierarchy in the order is the default hierarchy for queries that do not specify a hierarchy explicitly. For example, if in the Cube Browser you drag the Product dimension to the OWC PivotTable pane, it will default to the Product by Categories hierarchy assuming that the product hierarchies are ordered as shown in Figure 4.15.

Using Excel 2007, I see that I cannot just grab the Dimension Name and drop it to a Row/Column section. It displays all the hierarchies in alphabetical order under the dimension, then lists all the other attributes under a folder called "More Fields". I must select either a hierarchy, or expand the More Fields folder and select an attribute.

However, in the Cube Browser in BIDS, when I grab the Dimension Name and drop it into the "Drop row fields here" section of the browser, it grabs a hierarchy that is alphabetically before the one I set as the top/left. Seems it is NOT honoring the hierarchy that I have placed above and to the left of all others.

 Am I missing something? I have seen on Microsoft Posts that you cannot specify a default attribute or hierarchy to be used, that AS will grab the first hierarchy it finds, or failing that, will grab the first attribute in the list.

Todd


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Teo Lachev replied on Thu, Jul 19 2007 12:39 PM
Thank you for reporting this. I am also confused as you could read more about in this post from another reader noticing the same discrepancy. I think ultimately the client decides which hierarchy to choose when the dimension is dropped. If you look at the profiler, you will see that the client requests the hierarchy explicitly. It seems like most clients go by the alphabetical order as you've noticed. So, despite the rumors of a fix, the hiearchy order in BIDS is not significant.  
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