Working with analysis report attributes

Attributes are fields or hierarchies that hold data that cannot be aggregated, like dates or names. String and boolean data types (and corresponding database types) are represented as attributes.

The attributes you see in the Attributes list depend on the type of report you selected (see Creating an analysis report for more information). Common attributes include non-hierarchical attributes (such as ResourceName or ActivityName, which let you report by resource or activity respectively) and hierarchical attributes (such as Main and Calendar, which let you report on a number of levels of the same attribute). The Calendar attribute, for example, might include Top, Year and Qtr levels, where years are amalgamations of quarter data and the top level includes data from all years.

If you selected any ranges to add to the report, these will be included as attributes here.

Analysis reports groups attributes into dimensions. For example, each of the levels of your XPAC project (such as Top, Pit, Strip, Seam, Block) would display grouped under the dimension called Main.

The Measures field in each list of attributes behaves like an attribute, but with members that come from measures placed onto the Data shelf. Each measure from the Data shelf has a corresponding member and vice versa.

The Values measure correlates with the Measures attribute. When the Values field is in the layout, the Measures field is implicitly present in the Level Of Detail shelf. As a result, you can see several data points when there are no attributes or hierarchies in the layout. This is to avoid an aggregation of several measures.

You can identify whether a field that has already been dropped to a shelf is an attribute or a measure. With the default theme, attributes are blue and measures are green. Dragging & dropping an attribute to the Columns or Rows shelf displays header labels for the data.

When you drag & drop an attribute to a shelf on the Encodings card, resulting legends look different from ones created when you drag & drop a measure to it. This is because attribute values are represented as individual values while measure values are represented as a range with a sliding scale.

Adding or editing an attribute

You can:

•	add an attribute by right-clicking any dimension header in the list and selecting Add Attribute. This displays the Add Attribute window.

•	edit an attribute by right-clicking the attribute that you want to edit and selecting Edit Attribute. This displays the Edit Attribute window.

Each of these windows lets you define the Caption that displays in the Attributes menu and on card shelves, and the Display Folder in the Attributes pane under which the attribute will display. The windows also let you define various expressions for the attribute.

Expressions

See Working with analysis report expressions for a comprehensive summary of the expression builder.

Build each expression from query fields drawn from the XPAC project (to the left of the expression builder) and operators (at the bottom of the expression builder).

Apply your query fields and operators by clicking in the appropriate expression field, then double-clicking the query field or operator you need.

You can set your Result Type by selecting from the relevant drop-down list.

Deleting an attribute

You can delete an attribute from the Attributes list by right-clicking it and selecting Delete Attribute.

However, you can only delete an attribute, dimension, hierarchy or level that you create within analysis reports. You cannot delete attributes, dimensions, hierarchies or levels that were created by analysis reports when creating the report.