How to determine if shared member is descendant

Question

I have an account dimension that has several different alternate hierarchies. All of the leaf level accounts are in the Base Accounts hierarchy; these leaf members are then shared in the other hierarchies.<BR><BR>What I would like to do is build a calculated measure that performs a particular formula if the current member is a descendant of a specific member, say X. I have tried to use IsAncestor and also the Count(Intersect(Descendants())) formula, but it apparently doesn't consider the shared members at the bottom as a descendant of X. I have also tried adding a UDA to the members in question and using the IsUDA function, but again, I can't use UDAs on the shared members.<BR><BR>Note this is an ASO cube being built in EIS.<BR><BR>Is there a way to determine whether a shared member is a descendant of a particular member in a hierarchy?<BR><BR>Thanks,<BR><BR>Matt

Answer 1

In general, shared members need careful handling in MDX. A couple of mechanical observations and a question.<BR><BR>Yup, there's a paradox at hand. The query <BR><BR> SELECT<BR> Filter (<BR> Descendants ( [Diet] ),<BR> IsAncestor ( [Product].CurrentMember, [Diet] )<BR> ) on axis (0)<BR> FROM [Sample.Basic]<BR><BR>returns an empty set, while the following formula only returns 1 for those shared versions that are in fact under the share, so the [100-20] under [Colas] does not get a 1.<BR><BR> Count (<BR> Intersect (<BR> { [Accounts].CurrentMember },<BR> Descendants (<BR> [[[Account Parent 1]]],<BR> [Accounts].Levels(0)<BR> ),<BR> ALL<BR> )<BR> )<BR><BR>Somehow, IsAncestor() returns FALSE even for members obtained as descendants of the Ancestor, while intersecting that member with the set of Descendants returns identity. But it's a different member somehow, since <BR><BR> Intersect (<BR> { [Accounts].Levels(0) },<BR> Descendants (<BR> [[[Account Parent 1]]],<BR> [Accounts].Levels(0)<BR> ),<BR> ALL<BR> )<BR><BR>only returns 1 instance of each member, not 2. Intersect(x,y, ALL) should return duplicates found in x when they exist. It seems like you can use Count(Intersect(Descendants())) for all "shared" versions of the member, but not the first, "non-shared" use of the member. Meanwhile, it would be great to avoid the set construction/counting overhead.<BR><BR>OK, enough of mechanics. What I'd like to inquire about is what you're trying to do. Are you trying to factor out logic into the shared parents, and then combine it based on what set of ancestors a member has? That would be clever, but maybe there's another approach. If you are trying to have different formulas for different shares, keep in mind that since a shared member is a shared instance of a member, it should have the same formula to calculate itself regardless of the parent it is under (since it is under all parents equally and simultaneously. A little more insight into your goals could give us a path to a solution.