Measures are the quantitative, numerical columns from the fact table of a cube. When a cube is processed, the measures are aggregated across the dimensions in the cube. For example, a database contains the following tables:
The following diagram illustrates the relationships of these tables.
The Sales_Facts table is the cube fact table and the related tables are the cube dimensions. The Sales_Quantity, Unit_Price, and Unit_Cost rows are measures that can be aggregated across dimensions such as Store, Customer, or Product.
In Decision Support Objects (DSO), the objects that implement the Measure interface have a ClassType property value of clsAggregationMeasure, clsCubeMeasure, or clsPartitionMeasure. These objects serve as containers for measure objects within each respective parent object. The Measure interface provides a number of properties and methods to manipulate these objects. For an overview of cube, partition, and aggregation objects and how they relate to each other, see About Decision Support Objects.
Each of these objects implements the Measure interface, but not necessarily all of the Measure properties. Some Measure properties may be restricted to read-only access by some objects. For example, a clsCubeMeasure object allows read and write access to its FormatString property whereas access to this property for any other measure object is read-only. The collections and properties of the Measure interface also apply to the measures of virtual cubes, although no special class is implemented for virtual cube measures. There are no methods associated with the Measure interface.
For more information about the Measure interface collections and properties and their applicability to the associated objects, see Collections and Properties.
| clsAggregationMeasure | clsPartitionMeasure |
| clsCubeMeasure |