Hierarchical dimensions are suitable when the dimension values can be logically organized into parent-child relationships. Dimension values of this type are typically organized into product categories or into ranges of prices or other values.
Through Guided Navigation, customers can access, in succession, the dimension's root dimension value, the root's child dimension values, and so on, to the leaf dimension values at the bottom of the hierarchy. Typical, it is only to leaf dimensions that records of product data are tagged.
For example, a hierarchical dimension named
Clothing might be configured as shown in the following
diagram (the child dimension values of
Mens and
Childrens are not shown):
Refer to the Discover Electronics reference application for an
example of how parent and child relationships among dimension values in
hierarchical dimensions are configured in
rs_baseline_dimvals.xml,
which is located in
\apps\Discover\test_data\baseline. For more
information, see
Configuring dimension values for hierarchical dimensions.
