The hierarchy editor can be invoked both for hierarchies located on one of the grid axes as for hierarchies not located on one of the axes. The editor will behave differently depending on the location of the hierarchy.
Note: the editor for the measure hierarchy works differently, see the measures hierarchy for more information.
When a hierarchy isn't located on one of the axes, selecting a member will automatically select all descendents of the member. Moreover, if all descendents of a member are selected, the parent member itself is selected. We call this Smart Selection.
This can best be illustrated by an example:
We are viewing the Customer Gender hierarchy in the columns and the Product hierarchy in the rows and we would like to view this information for the first quarter of 2002.
The Date.Calendar hierarchy is not located on one of the axes.
If we open the hierarchy editor for Date.Calendar and select Q1 (of 2002), all months within Q1 will be selected and the year 2002 and the first semester will be indicated as partially selected as shown below:
This is because it is meaningless to be able to select both Q1 and a month within Q1, as viewing the data for Q1 automatically includes the data for all months within Q1. Also, 2002 and H1 are shown as partially selected, as not all child members within 2002 and H1 have been selected. If we select 2002, this will automatically select Q1-Q4, as these are all part of 2002.
Regular selection
When a hierarchy is on an axis, smart selection is turned off. This means selecting a member will not influence the selection of parent/child members.
In the example, if we replace the product hierarchy by the Date.Calendar hierarchy on the rows and invoke the hierarchy editor for Date.Calendar, we will be able to select both 2002 and Q1 as shown below:
This is because both items (2002 and Q1) will show up as separate rows in the grid, displaying the results for both the first quarter and the whole year.