Creating a physical measure as a placeholder for MDX assignments
There can be many problems regarding calculated members. First, they don't aggregate up like regular members; we have to handle that by ourselves. Next, the drill through statements and security restrictions are only allowed for regular members. Not to mention the limited support for them in various client tools, such as Excel. Finally, regular measures often noticeably beat their calculate measures counterparts in terms of performance or the ability to work with the subselect.
On the other hand, calculated members can be defined and/or deployed very easily. They don't require any drastic change of the cube or the dimensions and therefore are good for testing, debugging, as a temporary solution, or even as a permanent one. Anything goes as long as they don't become a serious obstacle in any of the ways mentioned earlier. When that happens, it's time to look for an alternative.
In the previous recipe, Using a dummy dimension to...
