MdmAttribute Class

MdmAttribute is a subclass of MdmDimensionedObject, which is an abstract subclass of MdmSource.

Description of an MdmAttribute

An MdmAttribute represents a particular characteristic of the elements of an MdmDimension. An MdmAttribute maps one element of the MdmDimension to a particular value. A typical example is an MdmAttribute that records the gender of each customer in an MdmDimension called mdmCustomersDim. In this case, the elements of the MdmAttribute have the values "Female" and "Male".

The values of an MdmAttribute might be String values (such as "Female"), numeric values (such as 45), or objects (such as MdmLevel objects).

Like an MdmMeasure, an MdmAttribute has elements that are organized by its MdmDimension. For example, the gender MdmAttribute has one element (with "Female" or "Male" as its value) for each element of the MdmDimension called mdmCustomersDim.

Typically, not all of the elements of an MdmDimension have meaningful mappings to the values of a given MdmAttribute. For example, the gender MdmAttribute applies only to the lowest level of mdmCustomersDim, because gender makes no sense for higher levels such as cities or states. If an MdmAttribute does not apply to some elements of an MdmDimension, then their MdmAttribute values are null.

Some MdmAttribute objects provide a mapping that is one-to-many, rather than one-to-one. Therefore, a given element in an MdmDimension might map to a whole set of MdmAttribute elements. For example, the MdmAttribute that serves as the ancestors attribute for an MdmHierarchy maps each MdmHierarchy element to its set of ancestor MdmHierarchy elements.

Elements of an MdmAttribute

A given MdmAttribute is based on an attribute that was specified for a dimension or a level by a database administrator using the OLAP Metadata APIs.

The following table lists the elements for an MdmAttribute called mdmCustomersDimGender, which is based on the MdmDimension called mdmCustomersDim. Note that the values of the MdmAttribute are null for the city, country, and region levels. There are meaningful values only for the customer level, where each customer is represented by a number.

Elements of mdmCustomersDim	Elements of mdmCustomersDimGender
. . .	. . .
Africa	null
South Africa	null
Cape Town	null
5420	Female
11650	Female
17880	Male
24120	Female
67720	Male
73960	Male
. . .	. . .