Custom Member Properties

Introduction

Members have standard properties, such as names or captions (which are defined in the MDX standard). They are also allowed to have non-standard properties. These non-standard properties are called custom member properties.

For example, in a hierarchy of the employees of a company, the employees (who are the members of the hierarchy) could have their phone numbers as properties.

Custom member properties can be displayed on a pivot table delivered by Excel or ActiveUI. They can also be used to filter the result.

Defining a Custom Member Property

A custom member property is an extended plugin implementing the ICustomProperty interface.

Here is an example of a custom member property that retrieves the date of the earliest trade for a given desk (additional snippet on the sandbox project):

@QuartetExtendedPluginValue(intf = ICustomProperty.class, key = DeskNextTradeDateProperty.PLUGIN_KEY)
public class DeskNextTradeDateProperty extends ADatastoreVersionAwareProperty {
    /** For serialization. */
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 3592828338042225441L;
    /** Plugin type. */
    public static final String PLUGIN_KEY = "DESK_NEXT_TRADE_DATE";
    /**
     * Constructs the plugin.
     *
     * @param name The name of the plugin.
     */
    public DeskNextTradeDateProperty(String name) {
        super(name);
    }
    public DeskNextTradeDateProperty(String name, String expression) {
        super(name, expression);
    }
    @Override
    public Object getValue(Object desk, IDatastoreVersion datastore) {
        // Warning: doing complex computations in this function will
        // hurt performance, especially when doing big cross-joins.
        // In a distributed environment, the datastore is null
        if(datastore == null){
            return null;
        }
        //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
        // Retrieve all the trade dates corresponding to this desk,
        // using the condition query API.
        final ICondition cond = BaseConditions.Equal("Desk", desk);
        final IRecordQuery getProductNameQuery = new RecordQuery(
                "Trade",
                cond,
                "Date");
        final ICursor results = datastore.execute(getProductNameQuery);
        //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
        // Iterate over the result to find the next trade date
        Temporal nextDate = null;
        while (results.next()) {
            // Read the first and only value, which is the date.
            Object result = results.getRecord().read(0);
            // Result might also be the N/A String.
            if (result instanceof Temporal) {
                final Temporal date = (Temporal) result;
                ChronoUnit unit = null;
                if (date.isSupported(ChronoUnit.MILLIS)) {
                    unit = ChronoUnit.MILLIS;
                } else {
                    unit = ChronoUnit.DAYS;
                }
                if (nextDate == null || date.until(nextDate, unit) > 0) {
                    nextDate = date;
                }
            } else {
                // Verifies that it was actually the N/A string.
                assert result instanceof String && ((String) result).equals("N/A") : "Expected N/A String, but was: " + result;
            }
        }
        return nextDate;
    }
    @Override
    public String getType() { return PLUGIN_KEY; }
}

That custom member property can then be set for the desk in the cube definition:

StartBuilding.cube("DeskNextTradeDatePropertyCube")
        .withDimension("Booking")
            .withHierarchy("Desk")
                .withLevel("Desk")
                    .withMemberProperty()
                        .withNameAndExpression("nextTradeDate")
                        .withPluginKey(DeskNextTradeDateProperty.PLUGIN_KEY)
        .build();

Accessing a Custom Member Property via MDX

There are two ways to access custom member properties via MDX:

• Using the PROPERTIES keyword:

DIMENSION PROPERTIES [Booking].[Desk].[nextTradeDate]

• Using the Properties function:

[Booking].[Desk].[ALL].[AllMember].[DeskA].Properties('nextTradeDate')

You can also filter a query based on the custom member property:

WITH
Member Measures.NextTrade AS [Bookings].CurrentMember.Properties(
  "nextTradeDate"
)
SELECT {
  [Measures].[contributors.COUNT]
} ON COLUMNS,
Filter(
  [Bookings].[Desk].Members,
  [Measures].[NextTrade] = "2021-01-02"
) ON ROWS
FROM [DeskNextTradeDatePropertyCube]

Viewing a Member Property in Excel

When connecting to the ActivePivot Server from Excel, you can view member properties by hovering over the members.

Alternatively, you can add a column to your table and display the member properties as a column.

As of Excel Version 2101, a simple right-click on the pivot-table where a member displays will open a pop-up menu that contains the "Show Properties in Report" option. If the level corresponding to the member you right-clicked has defined custom properties, those properties will display and you can choose which member property to add to your report as a column.

Viewing a Member Property in ActiveUI

By default, member properties do not display in the ActiveUI PivotTable. If you add a member property via the PROPERTIES keyword to the MDX query, that member property will display when you hover over a cell that contains a member with that property:

SELECT NON EMPTY Hierarchize(
  DrilldownLevel(
    [Booking].[Desk].[ALL].[AllMember]
  )
) PROPERTIES [Booking].[Desk].[Desk].[nextTradeDate] ON ROWS
FROM [DeskNextTradeDatePropertyCube]