The Item dimension

Let us have a look at the Item table in our Data Source View:

Right-click the table header in the Data Source View to start exploring data for that table.

The result of an Explore Data operation is then shown on a separate tab.

When looking at the content of Item table we may notice several fields that could be suitable for a new dimension, e.g. the Description field, which seems to contain a nice item name related to each unique item number.

Exploring a table gives you a chance to get a quick glance at the contents of a table and its potentials for creating new dimensions.

Once we have identified something that we would like to turn into a dimension, we can go to the Solution Explorer on the right hand side to add a New Dimension to the Dimensions folder.

Right-click the Dimensions folder to add a new dimension.

This will start up a Dimension Wizard where you at first can decide to base the new dimension on one of the existing tables in your Data Source View.

Next we will determine which one of our tables from the Data source view must be used as basis for our new dimension. The Key column chosen will be the primary key column from your table. The Name column option gives you an opportunity to display values from a different column from your table instead of the values from your key column.

At this point let us just go with the defaults.

The next step offers to select further dimension attributes from the table. Each dimension attribute (including the key attribute) can be used for categorization and/or data filtering in your Business Intelligence solution.

If you do not add any further attributes at this point and later discovers that you does need further attributes, it can easily be done after the dimension wizard has completed. For the Item dimension we will just go with the single (key) attribute at this time.

The final step of the wizard is to name the new dimension properly. By default it will be named accordingly to the name of its source table.

The preview should give you an idea of which attributes have been selected so far.

After having clicked Finish in the dimension wizard, the newly created dimension will be displayed in a three panel Design window.

At this point it is quite easy to drag e.g. the Description column from the Data Source View panel to the Attributes panel to add it as a new attribute to the dimension.

Now, with the very basic dimension design we have made so far, we would like to Process the Item dimension in order to see what categorization options this will provide to the end users.

Processing a dimension (or anything else) brings you through a number of steps. Since we have just made changes to our dimension design, we are asked to build and deploy our project first. If we don’t, the changes won’t be visible to any potential end users.

As soon as we have clicked Yes to this, we will see the Deploying and Processing status running in the lower part of the Solution Explorer on the lower right hand side.

When the Deployment and Processing of the project has successfully completed, we are ready to start processing the dimension.

At this point you may experience an error. If you get an error similar to the one pictured below, you are probably experiencing a problem with the Impersonation setting in the Data Source.

To correct the Impersonation setting, you will have to go back to the Data Source definition of your project in the Solution Explorer on the right hand side. Double click the Stage.ds Data Source or right click to open the Data Source settings dialogue box.

Depending on the authorization settings on the Stage database, you must choose the proper Impersonation setting. In the TARGIT University training environment, you can choose the Service Account option.

When Impersonation settings have been corrected and no further errors are encountered, the processing of the dimension will complete after a few seconds.

The processing of the Item dimension has completed successfully and can be closed.

Also, close the other Processing dialogue box.

While still in the dimension designer window, we can switch to the Browser tab to get a quick glance on how this dimension will present itself to end users.