The Measures hierarchy is a special hierarchy within a cube. There is always a single instance present in every report,  the hierarchy editor works slightly different when editing the Measures hierarchy. When the hierarchy is located on an axis, the editor works the same as with other hierarchies (figure 1). When not located on an axis, only one measure can be selected, and the selection is now made via radio buttons instead of check boxes. The reason for this is that selecting multiple measures in a background hierarchy (i.e. non-axis hierarchy) would cause those measures to be aggregated. In most cases this would not make sense and would lead to errors. For example, Sales Amount and Costs cannot be aggregated, as this would mean aggregating a sum of money with a count of items, which is clearly a meaningless aggregation.

If you wish to aggregate certain measures, or use a formula, you must create a calculated member or named set for the measures hierarchy.

Note: a measure must always be selected to view data. If no measure has been explicitly selected, the default measure will be used.

Measure groups

Measures can be grouped by the measure group they belong to. To group the measures, press the button from the toolbar. To ungroup the measures, click this button again.

When the measures are on an axis, you can also select a single measure group, all measures within this group will then be selected.

Not that you can also limit the measures displayed here by selecting a measure group to filter on from the data sources window.

Display Folders

Measures can also be optionally assigned to display folders. This is done by the cube designer to logically group measures. To group the measures in their display folders, press the button on the toolbar. To ungroup them, press this button again.

If grouping by measure group is also turned on, the measures will be grouped by measure group first, and then by display folder.