Parameter substitution modes

We shall now discuss the parameter substitution modes in greater detail. Although the previous example demonstrated the majority of available functionalities, there is still much more left to be explained.

As we already said, the substitution mode defines how some parameter should be replaced by the resolution engine. There are four (4) possibilities here. You can:

 

1.       Replace only the selected instance of this parameter

2.       Replace all existing instances of this parameter

3.       Replace this instance from the user-defined selection list, or

4.       Replace this instance from the dynamically generated selection list prepared from the results of an MDX command in the runtime

 

We have just seen the first two possibilities in action, and now we are going to discuss the other two.

Sometimes you may want to restrict the end user’s parameter value selection with more control over the process. There are two (2) typical scenarios here:

 

1.       The values are predefined (hard-coded) in a form of a list of individual items (corresponds to Replace this instance from the user-defined selection list substitution mode), or

2.       The values are generated from the existing OLAP database (corresponds to Replace this instance from the dynamically generated selection list substitution mode); this requires a definition of the MDX SELECT command