Page 137 - DCAP606_BUSINESS_INTELLIGENCE

Business Intelligence

Notes You can add several kinds of activities to a cube. A URL action is helpful for navigating to a
particular World Wide Web location based on cube facts and figures.

Example: You might desire to visit a customer’s Web location after examining that
customer’s data in a cube, or you might desire to get access to information from an internal
reporting Web server to get more data about a specific product you’re analysing.

9.3.2 Creating Standard Actions

The Cube Designer in Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) includes an activity tab.
You can define an action on this tab by specifying the activity name, activity goal, the action
type, and the action sign that generates a string used to run the activity. An activity goal is the
portion of the cube to which the activity connects and is the object that the client clicks to launch
the action. The activity sign is a Multidimensional Expression (MDX) sign that evaluates as a
string applicable to the activity kind. Each activity kind has its own syntax requirements, but
usually you include the MDX CURRENTMEMBER function in the action expression to link the
object to the current cube context.

Did u know? In this method, we will add a new URL activity that opens a World Wide Web
page and executes a search for a product category or subcategory.

Create a URL action

1. Use Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) to open the AdventureWorks BI
solution. You will need to establish the AdventureWorks SSAS database before you can
create an activity. This ensures that the database created is present in BIDS and on the
analysis Services server are both the identical.
2. On the build menu, choose Deploy AdventureWorks SSAS. If the AdventureWorks SSAS
database currently lives on the server, a dialog carton may emerge warning that the data-
groundwork will be overwritten. If the warning appears, click Yes. The prior version of
the facts and figures-groundwork will be deleted and the current deployment will extend.

3. After the database has been successfully deployed and processed, expand the Cubes folder
in Solution Explorer, right-click the AdventureWorks.cube, and select View Designer.

4. In the Cube Designer, click the activities tab. On the activities tab toolbar, click New
Action.

5. In the Action Editor, change the name of the action to Internet Search.
6. An action target is the location in the cube where the action can be executed. An action
target has a target type and a target object. You can choose from several target types.

Example: If you select Cube, the action is available for all cube objects—every dimension,
hierarchy, level, and member.
7. Expand the Target Object List, expand the product dimension, choose product by Category,
and click OK. You can enter an MDX sign in the status text box to further limit the scope of
the target.
8. In the Condition text box, enter the following MDX expression:

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