Cube Perspectives
A new feature in SSAS is cube
perspectives. This is essentially a way to create working views of a
complex cube that is focused on just what a particular user or group of
users need. They don’t need all the dimensions, calculations, levels,
and key performance indicators (KPIs) that would otherwise be visible
as part of a complex SSAS cube. Therefore, you need a method to tailor
or limit a larger cube environment to be just what the users need and
nothing more—hence, the cube perspective. Figure 50
shows the Perspectives tab in the cube designer. It allows you to
easily customize a view (perspective), which is what will be deployed
or referenced to a target user group. In this example, you are creating
a new perspective called Comp Sales wo Sales Price, which excludes the
extremely sensitive Sales Price data measure from any user given access
to this perspective.
You can have any number of perspectives on a cube. Figure 51 shows what a cube user sees when trying to browse (or access) cube data via a perspective.
Using perspectives is a great way to simplify the user’s life in an already-complicated OLAP world.
KPIs
Figure 52
shows another new capability in SSAS: creating embedded KPIs. Just like
calculations, KPIs allow you to define thresholds, goals, status
indications, and trend expressions that become part of an OLAP cube.
Each can then be graphically displayed in a variety of ways (for
example, gauges, thermometers, traffic lights, trend indications such
as up arrows, smiling faces). This is perfect for an executive
dashboard or portal implementation that has its basis in an SSAS cube.
You can easily access KPIs via the cube designer’s KPIs tab. What are
you waiting for? It is pretty easyto create powerful KPIs with this
simple yet rich interface.
