Creating Attributes

Attributes provide information about the individual members of a dimension. They are used for labeling crosstabular and graphical data displays, selecting data, organizing dimension members, and so forth. All dimensions are created with long and short description attributes. Time dimensions also have time span and end date attributes. Be sure to edit these object definitions as necessary.

By default, all the values for an attribute appear in a single column of the dimension and hierarchy views, regardless of level, corresponding to the keys in the DIM_KEY column. However, some querying tools, such as Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition, require that the views display the long and short descriptions in separate columns for each level. If the cubes will support a querying tool with this requirement, you can add the level-based columns after mapping the dimension, as described in the following procedure.

To create an attribute:

In the navigation tree, expand the folder for the dimension.
Right-click Attributes, then choose Create Attribute from the pop-up menu.

The Create Attribute dialog box is displayed.
Complete all tabs of the Create Attribute dialog box.

Click Help for specific information about these choices.
Click Create.

The new attribute appears as an item in the Attributes folder.
When you are done creating attributes, map the dimension to its data sources.

To generate description attribute columns by level:

From the Tools menu, choose Configuration.

The Configuration dialog box is displayed.
Under General, select Enable Description Attributes By Level, then click OK.
Right-click the Long Description attribute in the navigation tree, then select Create Description Attributes By Level. Repeat this step for the Short Description attribute.