MdmLevel Class

MdmLevel is a subclass of MdmHierarchicalDimension, which is an abstract subclass of MdmDimension.

Description of an MdmLevel

An MdmLevel is an MdmHierarchicalDimension whose parents and children are elements from other MdmLevel objects. The elements from a given MdmLevel correspond to a subset of the elements in an MdmHierarchy.

A given MdmLevel is based on a level that was specified by a database administrator using the OLAP Metadata APIs. Typically, the database administrator specified a column in a database table to provide the elements for the level.

Even though the elements of an MdmLevel have parent-child relationships, an MdmLevel is represented as a simple list. The parent-child relationships among the elements are recorded in the parent and ancestors attributes, which you can obtain by calling the getParentRelation and getAncestorsRelation methods on the MdmLevel. Sometimes the parent and ancestors attributes are referred to as parent and ancestors relations.

Typically, an MdmLevel has an MdmBaseDimensionDefinition, because the underlying data is structured as a single list.

Elements of an MdmLevel

The list of elements in an MdmLevel includes only the elements in that one level. The values of the elements must be unique. However, uniqueness can be achieved by a database administrator who defines the level using two relational columns. For example, a level that represents cities can be defined in the relational database based on both the city column and the state column. This makes it possible for the value "Springfield" to appear for two different elements in the city level: one appears for Springfield, Illinois and another appears for Springfield, Massachusetts.

The following table lists the elements for an MdmLevel called mdmQuarter, which records the three-month quarters for a level MdmHierarchy called mdmTimesDimCalHier. This MdmHierarchy covers four years, so the number of elements in mdmQuarter is 16.

Elements of mdmQuarter
1998-Q1
1998-Q2
1998-Q3
1998-Q4
1999-Q1
1999-Q2
1999-Q3
1999-Q4
2000-Q1
. . .
2001-Q4