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Why are there more then 2 axis possible in MDX and where can I use it?

I've been googling around to get this question answered. There is a max of 128 Axis you can use in MDX language, but I cannot find a single application that uses it nor a purpose of doing it.

There is this ADOMD.Net component i could use to write my own application that can work with it, but there is no single example i can find of why i should do it, and also no example of what people do with it in their applications.

Can someone please explain this to me ?

Solution

  • You can use as many axes as you like in a sub-select - it is very useful there for doing filtering.

    An example:

    SELECT 
  NON EMPTY 
    [Sales Territory].[Sales Territory].MEMBERS ON 0
 ,[Date].[Calendar].[Month].MEMBERS ON 1
FROM 
(
  SELECT 
    {
        [Date].[Calendar].[Month].&[2006]&[1]
      : 
        [Date].[Calendar].[Month].&[2006]&[8]
    } ON 0
   ,[Sales Territory].[Sales Territory].[Country].[Canada] ON 1
   ,[Product].[Product Categories].[Category].&[1] ON 2
  FROM [Adventure Works]
)
WHERE [Measures].[Internet Sales Amount];

    This returns the following:

    enter image description here

    Edit

    I suspect that the ability to use more than 2 axes had an element of future-proofing the language at the time it was created. So the authors were unsure how it would be used and thus built in this functionality.