Manage levels within a parent child dimension

The parent child dimension hierarchy is derived from a single dimension table. There is no need for an All level in this dimension as explained earlier in this tutorial.

In the cube tree, select the Employee Dimension and on the Advanced tab of the Properties window, change the value of the All Level Property to No and press Enter. The preview window is refreshed to show a hierarchy with no All Level. Specific names can be assigned to levels of a parent child dimension if required.

Expand the Employee dimension and select the Employee Id level on the Advanced tab of the properties window, select Level naming Template property and click the ellipsis button.

Click in the box to the right of the asterisk(*) and type CEO. Do not press Enter. Note that the Asterisk changes to 1 as the user types in the name of the level and a new row with an asterisk appears;

Click in the box in the second row, and type Supervisor and so on till all the levels required are entered. The levels are automatically created below the lowest level specified are given sequential numbers. Levels can only be skipped if the dimension level contains a column indicating how many levels to skip.

Click the schema tab to display the source tables for the cube. Right click the heading of the employee table and click Browse Data. Check whether the table contains a Skipped_Levels column. The employee table in the FoodMart database does not contain a Skipped_levels Property.

To set the skipped level property of the Employee table(on the assumption that it has a Skipped_Levels column) select the Skipped_Levels column and click OK. This will have no impact until the cube is processed. Within the dimension skipping levels will create a ragged hierarchy. The term ragged means that some members have unusual relationships with their parents. In a ragged parent dimension, extra space is added in the place of one or more parents.

Click Process cube button, click yes to save the cube, No to design storage and OK to fully process the cube. Close the process log window and click Data tab to view the data. Expand the levels of the employee dimension.