Strategy ONE

Define Relationships Between Attributes

Attribute relationships define how tables and columns are joined and used, and which tables are related to other tables. he relationships give meaning to the data by providing logical associations of attributes based on business rules.

Every attribute relationship has two parts—a parent and a child. A child must always have a parent and a parent can have multiple children. The parent attribute is at a higher logical level than the child.

Relationship types are defined by the attribute elements that exist in the related attributes. Each type is described below:

  • One-to-one: Each element in the parent attribute corresponds to one and only one element in the child attribute, and each child attribute corresponds to one and only one element in the parent attribute.

    A citizen can have only one taxpayer ID and a taxpayer ID can be assigned to only one citizen.

  • One-to-many: Each element in the parent attribute corresponds to one or more elements in the child attribute, and each child attribute corresponds to one and only one element in the parent attribute.

    Year has a one-to-many relationship to quarter. One year has many quarters, but a specific quarter can be in one year only. This assumes that quarters are defined with an accompanying year such as Q4 2019, Q1 2020, etc.

  • Many-to-many: Each element in the parent attribute can have multiple children and each child element in the child attribute can have multiple parents.

    In banking, customers and accounts are an example of a many-to-many relationship. One customer can have many accounts, and each account can be associated with many customers, such as in the case of a joint checking account.

Most relationships are auto-managed by default. Auto-managed relationships become user-managed when you modify the relationships on the Define Relationships dialog. MicroStrategy does not auto-manage relationships for datasets from super cubes.

  1. Open the Preview dialog.
  2. Click the table drop-down.
  3. Click Define Relationships.
  4. Click Add New .
  5. Complete the fields to define a relationship.
  6. If necessary, select the toggle button to convert a relationship to user or auto managed .
  7. Click Save.