Dimension usage with measure group

Earlier in this chapter, you built your first cube and experienced how quickly you can build business applications using Analysis Services and Excel. The sample cube was very simplistic in a sense that it only exposed two dimensions, each of which had a direct relationship with the fact table. The Cube Wizard automatically detected such relationships and required minimal developer interaction. There are many real-world applications that have a model very similar to your sample cube. However, other requirements necessitate the usage of more complex fact-to-dimension relationships, which you will learn next.

To define how dimensions relate to various measure groups in your cube, switch over to the tab called Dimension Usage. Instead of creating all the dimensions from scratch, you will use the Adventure Works 2012 sample database. Keep in mind that the sample database exposes every possible dimension relationship type because the database is a learning tool...