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Why does icCube require Data Table for a time dimension


The documentation states (the words in brackets are mine):

[A time wizard dimension] allows us to define/generate a time dimension without any underlying data table.

The accompanying image in the documentation does not show a field for entering a data table. However, when I look at the definition of the Time dimension in the demo Sales cube (version 6.5 of icCube), I see that a data table is in fact used. Also, there is no option in the drop-down menu to not specify a table. So, it becomes not clear what is special about the time dimension. What am I missing?


Solution

  • In icCube there is nothing really special about a "time" dimension.

    However, you can define a time dimension as any other dimension using a table or using the "time wizard" that is going to generate days between the specified from and to dates (therefore no need of table).

    The demo Sales schema is defining a time dimension using a table.

    In its definition, a dimension is flagged as time (and possibly default time dimension) because it can be used as the default rollup hierarchy with custom aggregation (e.g., open non empty).

    Note that several MDX functions (e.g., parallelPeriod, dtXyz) allows for navigating a time dimension in quite a specific way.