Defining a Cube
The Cube Wizard helps you define the measure groups and dimensions for a cube. In the following task, you will use the Cube Wizard to build a cube.
To define a cube and its properties
In Solution Explorer, right-click Cubes, and then click New Cube. The Cube Wizard appears.
On the Welcome to the Cube Wizard page, click Next.
On the Select Creation Method page, verify that the Use existing tables option is selected, and then click Next.
On the Select Measure Group Tables page, verify that the Adventure Works DW 2012 data source view is selected.
Click Suggest to have the cube wizard suggest tables to use to create measure groups.
The wizard examines the tables and suggests InternetSales as a measure group table. Measure group tables, also called fact tables, contain the measures you are interested in, such as the number of units sold.
Click Next.
On the Select Measures page, review the selected measures in the Internet Sales measure group, and then clear the check boxes for the following measures:
Promotion Key
Currency Key
Sales Territory Key
Revision Number
By default, the wizard selects as measures all numeric columns in the fact table that are not linked to dimensions. However, these four columns are not actual measures. The first three are key values that link the fact table with dimension tables that are not used in the initial version of this cube.
Click Next.
On the Select Existing Dimensions page, make sure the Date dimension that you created earlier is selected, and then click Next.
On the Select New Dimensions page, select the new dimensions to be created. To do this, verify that the Customer, Geography, and Product check boxes are selected, and then clear the InternetSales check box.
Click Next.
On the Completing the Wizard page, change the name of the cube to Analysis Services Tutorial. In the Preview pane, you can see the InternetSales measure group and its measures. You can also see the Date, Customer, and Product dimensions.
Click Finish to complete the wizard.
In Solution Explorer, in the Analysis Services Tutorial project, the Analysis Services Tutorial cube appears in the Cubes folder, and the Customer and Product database dimensions appear in the Dimensions folder. Additionally, in the center of the development environment, the Cube Structure tab displays the Analysis Services Tutorial cube.
On the toolbar of the Cube Structure tab, change the Zoom level to 50 percent, so that you can more easily see the dimensions and fact tables in the cube. Notice that the fact table is yellow and the dimension tables are blue.
On the File menu, click Save All.
Next Task in Lesson
Adding Attributes to Dimensions