Element captions

When accessing an OLAP dimension through Application Studio or other XMLA-clients, each element has a unique name, an element name, and a caption.

These are the definitions of unique name, element name, and caption:

  • The unique name is the name that is referenced in Application Studio lists and formulas. The unique name is not stored in OLAP dimensions but is generated through the XMLA Provider.
  • The element name is the unique user-friendly name of an element.
  • The caption is the display name for an element. If the element names are translated, OLAP returns the translation that matches the currently used language. If element names have not been translated, the element names are returned.

    Elements names are unique in OLAP but captions are not. For example, the caption January could be used in every year in the Time dimension.

Element translations can be stored in dimension attributes and in dynamic attributes.