Perspectives

The idea of perspectives helps to assemble hierarchies in meaningful combinations and provide them as virtual views and cubes in the API and to the users. You can set different default elements in a perspective or even remove a dimension completely. This helps users in their context while working with the application.

Dimensions can be represented in a perspective in different ways:

• Use the dimension in the same way as in the base cube. This means with the same default hierarchy and with all hierarchies and their respective default elements.
• Use the dimension with all hierarchies but change the default hierarchy.
• Use the dimension with all hierarchies but change the default element in one or more hierarchies. The latter two can be combined.
• Do not include the dimension. In this case it must be specified in the perspective from which element in the dimension the values will be returned.

Perspectives are created in relation to a base cube. The base cube must be a data cube. Access cubes are not allowed.

Use Domain cubes to select perspectives which are filtered or driven by the same context dimensions. These cubes for perspective selection contain:

• The Perspective dimension with the used perspectives or base cubes in the context as the Measure dimension.
• The specific context dimensions.
• The Domain_System dimension that consists of the numeric base elements Applicable and Configuration.

These OLAP functionalities cannot be used on Domain cubes: Rules, cell notes, and splashing.

Within the Domain cube perspectives can be assigned to a specific context. A context is a combination of elements of the context dimensions in the Domain cube. Context dimensions do not have to be part of the base cubes as they are used for filtering.

The ContextRelated XML attribute indicates if a perspective is with context or contextless.