Property Element (CSDLBI)

Article
10/31/2023

Important: This document is archived. For the latest information, refer to Open Specification [MS-CSDLBI]: Conceptual Schema Definition File Format with Business Intelligence Annotations.

The Property element in CSDLBI is a complex type that provides additions to the CSDL Property element, in support of business intelligence data models.

Elements and Attributes

The following table lists the elements and attributes that define the CSDLBI Property element.

Name	Is Required	Description
Contents	No	A string that contains the LCID of the request.
DefaultAggregationFunction	Yes	A string that specifies the aggregation function that should be used if calculations are performed over the attribute and no other function has been specified. If not specified, the default aggregation for the model is used, which is typically SUM.
GroupingBehavior	No	A value that specifies how query results are grouped. The attribute's contents are defined by the TGroupingBehavior simple type (see table below).
OrderBy	No	A reference to another property within the model that defines the sort order for that property's values. The values for the two properties SHOULD have a 1-to-1 mapping. Otherwise, the sort behavior is undefined. If this element is omitted, the properties are sorted based on their values.
Stability	No	An attribute that specifies the stability of the property values between refresh operations. This attribute is not set by users, but is emitted by the design-time environment only for unstable values. It is always applied to columns that contain a row number, and to columns that contain formulas that generate indeterminate results, such as NOW() or RAND(). The values for this attribute are listed in the table below, that describes the Stabilitysimple type.

GroupingBehavior

The following table lists the values of the GroupingBehavior simple type.

Value	Description
GroupOnValue	Group by the value of xthe attribute.
GroupOnEntityKey	Group by the entity key.

The following example illustrates the usage of these two values. Suppose the query was designed to return payroll deductions for a certain user, specified by name. Assuming the database contains two users with the same name but different database identifiers, the query results would be different depending on which attribute value is applied to the column:

GroupOnValue: Query results include the payroll deductions of both users, totaled together.
GroupOnEntityKey: Query results include the payroll deductions for each user, but listed individually.

Stability

The following table lists the values of the Stability simple type.

Value	Description
Stable	The property remains constant between refresh operations.
RowNumber	The property contains a row number.
Volatile	The property might not remain constant between refresh operations.

Example Tabular

The following XML shows the representation, in CSDLBI version 1.1, of some properties in the AdventureWorks tabular model sample.

  
<EntityType   
   Name="DimEmployee">  
   <Key>  
      <PropertyRef   
      Name="RowNumber" />  
   </Key>  
  
   <Property   
      Name="RowNumber"   
      Type="Int64"   
      Nullable="false">  
   <bi:Property   
      Hidden="true"   
      Contents="RowNumber"   
      Stability="RowNumber" />  
   </Property>  
  
   <Property   
      Name="EmployeeKey"   
      Type="Int64">  
   <bi:Property />  
   </Property>  
….  
</bi:EntityType>  
</EntityType>

Example Multidimensional

The following sample, in CSDLBI version 1.1, shows some properties for columns in the data model representing the Contoso Operations cube. Note that BI annotations are not required or applied to most columns, only those that require special handling in the presentation layer.

  
<EntityType   
   Name="Bike">  
  
   <Key>  
      <PropertyRef Name="RowNumber" />  
   </Key>  
  
   <Property   
      Name="RowNumber"   
      Type="Int64"   
      Nullable="false">  
   <bi:Property   
      Hidden="true"   
      Contents="RowNumber"   
      Stability="RowNumber"   
   />  
   </Property>  
  
   <Property   
      Name="ProductAlternateKey"   
      Type="String"   
      MaxLength="Max"   
      Unicode="true"   
      FixedLength="false">  
   <bi:Property />  
   </Property>

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