Functionality: Dynamic

BIXL

I.A.

Plain

XL3

Slicing

ü

ü

ü

ü

Change Row & Column Dimensions

ü

ü

ü

ü

Nesting of Dimensions

ü

ü

ü

ü

Stacking of Dimensions

û

û

û

û

Drill Down/Up

ü

ü

ü

ü

Drillthrough

ü

ü

ü

ü

Search on Members

ü

ü

ü

ü

Filtering

ü

ü

ü

ü

Dynamic Narratives

û

û

û

û

Actions

û

û

ü

û

Slicing – the creation of a view in Excel of data from a cube, with row & column members with values & slicer dimensions members that can be changed

Change Row & Column Dimensions – ad-hoc analysis requires that dimensions on the rows & columns can be changed around along with slicer dimensions; in otherwords, move a row or column dimension to become a slicer dimension, & vice-versa

Nesting of Dimensions – to have more than one dimension on the rows/columns axis

Stacking of Dimensions – to have more than one dimension on the rows/columns axis, but no nested; like two separate MDX queries but no repetition of the same column dimension labels

Drill Down/Up – row & column members are at different levels, it must be easy to get from one level to another & preferably having the option to keep or replace existing level members

Drillthrough – sometimes the lowest level value in a cube is made up of a number of values in the fact table; drillthrough enables the numbers in the fact table to be retrieved

Search on Members – sometimes a dimension has very many members & scrolling to find the desired members is inappropriate

Filtering – To restrict the query values & members returned according to some criteria, e.g. only stores that have sold more than 100 items

Dynamic Narratives – to be able to tag comments explaining the significance of the numbers dynamically; so that one can see, for example, that the low sales figures for one store are due to a public holiday, but when the slicer dimension store member is changed one can see that another stores high sales figures are due to a particular promotion. This saves duplication of effort finding the answers to the same questions.

Actions – Analysis Services provides the ability to have an action performed when a particular query is returned