Member Name
Let's take a little break and look at the different ways we have of selecting members in MDX. One disruptive issue (when starting out as well as later when continuing on with MDX) is the fact that dimension, hierarchies, levels, and members, are mixed in the syntax.
What does this expression refer to, a dimension, a hierarchy, a level, or a member?
[Something].[What is This?]
The correct answer is that it could be any of the four. This may not be the clearest solution but this is the way it works.
Within MDX expressions, members are referred to using case-insensitive identifiers: Both Madrid and MADRID refer to the city Madrid within the Geography dimension.
When the name of a member contains reserved MDX characters (e.g. ]) and/or separators, then a delimited identifier has to be used. For example in . The ']' character must be escaped: is naming the member .
Unique member names are used to uniquely refer to a member within the cube and its dimensions/hierarchies. A unique name may be thought of as a path composed of local names.
A possible unique name is:
[Geography].[Geo].[City].[Madrid]
where Madrid has been referenced right from the City level.
Let's imagine that all the continents were organized into an extra level representing the whole world. We could use the following unique name to refer to Madrid:
[Geography].[Geo].[All].[Europe].[Spain].[Madrid]
You'll notice that no level name has been specified.
Next chapter: SELECT Statement.