In OLAP metadata, an attribute is a descriptive characteristic of one or more levels of a dimension. For example, the Product dimension for a clothing manufacturer might contain a level called Item, one of whose attributes is Color. Attributes represent logical groupings that enable end users to select data based on similar characteristics.
An MDAttribute
represents an attribute in the MetadataManager. MDAttribute
extends MDObject
. Attributes do not contain other objects.
Attribute values (such as Red, Blue, and Green) are stored in dimensions. For this reason, an attribute has at least two dimensions that belong with it:
The domain dimension is the dimension that the attribute describes. In our product-color example, Product is the domain dimension of the product-color attribute. To find the domain dimension of an attribute, you call MDAttribute.getDomainDimension
.
The range dimension is the dimension that lists valid values of the attribute. A Color dimension would be the range dimension of a product-color attribute. To find the range dimension, call MDAttribute.getRangeDimension
.