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Database Dimensions - Finance Account of parent-child type

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Applies to: SQL Server Analysis Services Azure Analysis Services Fabric/Power BI Premium

In Microsoft SQL Server SQL Server Analysis Services, an account type dimension is a dimension whose attributes represent a chart of accounts for financial reporting purposes.

An account dimension lets you selectively manage aggregation behavior across accounts over time. An account dimension also lets use a standard mechanism to resolve most of the nonstandard aggregation issues typically encountered in business intelligence solutions that handle financial data. If you did not have such a standard mechanism, resolving these nonstandard aggregation issues would require custom rollup formulas, calculated members, or Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) scripts.

To identify a dimension as an account dimension, set the Type property of the dimension to Accounts.

Dimension Structure

An account dimension contains, at least, two attributes:

  • A key attribute-an attribute that identifies individual accounts in the dimension table for the account dimension.

  • An account attribute-a parent attribute that describes how accounts are hierarchically arranged in the account dimension.

    To identify an attribute as an account attribute, set the Type property of the attribute to Account and the Usage property to Parent.

Account dimensions can optionally contain the following attributes:

  • An account type attribute-an attribute that defines the account type for each account in the dimension. The member names of the account type attribute map to the account types defined for the SQL Server Analysis Services database or project, and indicate the aggregation function used by SQL Server Analysis Services for those accounts. You can also use unary operators or custom rollup formulas to determine aggregation behavior for account attributes, but account types let you to easily apply consistent behavior to a chart of accounts without requiring changes to the underlying relational database.

    To identify an account type attribute, set the Type property of the attribute to AccountType.

  • An account name attribute-an attribute that is used for reporting purposes. You identify an account name attribute by setting the Type property of the attribute to AccountName.

  • An account number attribute-an attribute that is used for reporting purposes. You identify an account number attribute by setting the Type property of the attribute to AccountNumber.

For more information about attribute types, see Configure Attribute Types.

Adding Account Intelligence with the Business Intelligence Wizard

After you have defined an account dimension and added that dimension to a cube, you can use the Business Intelligence Wizard to adding account intelligence functionality, such as identifying and mapping account types, to the dimension. For more information, see Add Account Intelligence to a Dimension.

See Also

Attributes and Attribute Hierarchies
Business Intelligence Wizard F1 Help
Dimension Types