Displaying OLAP data in layout objects

Displaying OLAP data in layout objects allows you to organize visual data into manageable hierarchies.

For example, you have a cube model that contains dimensions for product data, regional data, and time data. The product dimension contains individual products that are organized into four product families. The region dimension contains states that are organized into four geographic regions. The time dimension contains the four fiscal quarters of the current year. You want to create a column chart that displays profit totals for all products, and organize the visual data by time and region. You set the column chart to display data points from the PROFIT column as bars, and select the Time and Region dimensions to organize the data. The column chart is initially displayed as four bars that show the profit totals for each region for the whole year. Expandable cells that display the current dimensional levels are displayed under each column. The user can drill down into any region, and the column chart refreshes to display a column for every state in that region, while still displaying the other three regional totals. The user can then drill down further to display the quarterly totals for a specific state. Alternatively, the user can choose to drill down into a given region's year, displaying that region's quarterly totals. This dynamic organization allows users to quickly and easily make visual comparisons of data as it pertains to the larger data set.

Another way to organize OLAP data in a layout object is to use slicer objects. A slicer is used to filter the multidimensional data that is displayed in a layout object. A visual designer creates a slicer and selects a dimension of the layout object's OLAP query to filter. When the user clicks the slicer object in runtime, a window opens that lists all of the selected dimension's hierarchies and hierarchy elements. The user can then check which elements the layout object will display. Whenever the user changes the settings in the filter window, the layout object refreshes to reflect the change in filtered data.

For example, in the layout object mentioned above, the data is organized by time and region and always displays the product totals for each data symbol. You want to give users the option to select which particular product totals or product group totals are displayed at any given time. You insert a slicer object, select the Product dimension to filter the data, and connect the slicer object to the layout object using the Connectivity tool. When the user clicks the slicer object in runtime, a window opens that displays a tree containing all of the product dimension's hierarchy elements. When the user checks off the products and clicks OK, the layout object automatically refreshes to display only the totals for the selected products.