Creating a Slice View

New Slice

PowerOLAP® provides a method for looking into a Cube to view and input data. This means of viewing and inputting data is known as “creating a Slice.” A Slice is a two-dimensional view of a Cube that arranges data in a grid, just as a spreadsheet does. You can create Slices “on the fly” to see any view of a Cube, or you can save and re-open Slices for ongoing data viewing or inputting. Finally, as you will see, you can instantaneously create an Excel spreadsheet from any Slice view.

To create a Slice called Regions by Accounts:

1.   From the PowerOLAP ribbon, go to Slice tab then in the Slice control group select the New Slice command.
The following New Slice dialog box is opened.

The list box displays the names of available Cubes in your database. In our case, we just created the only Cube listed, Current Year Budget.

2.   With the Current Year Budget cube selected, click OK.

The Slice View dialog box is opened in the Content Area of the main application window, as in the above diagram. The window displays a Current Year Budget slice, as yet untitled, and with no data in the grid.

3.   In the Slice tab of the PowerOLAP ribbon, go to the Worksheet control group and and select the Recalculate command; Alternatively you may press F9.

(This manually recalculates the grid’s data, explained further below.)
Keep in mind that, as yet, no figures have been entered into the Cube, so you will see zeros as data throughout the Slice.

By default, when PowerOLAP creates a new Slice, it places the last Dimension brought into the Cube when it was created in the Rows position, the next-to-last Dimension in the Columns position, and any remaining Dimension(s) in the Page position. (Remember that when we created the cube in the last exercise, the Dimensions were listed as follows: Months, Accounts, and Regions but we rearranged the order so that Months should be the topmost Dimension in the list.) In the above example Slice, Accounts are displayed as columns, Regions as rows and Months as the Page dimension, currently displaying January, which is the first Member entered for the Months dimension.

4.   From the PowerOLAP ribbon, go to the Slice tab and in the Slice control group select  Save Slice As command to save the slice.

5.   Type the in the Slice Name text box. For this exercise, name the slice as Regions by Accounts.

6.   Click OK.
You are returned to the Slice—note that both the Cube name, Current Year Budget, followed by the Slice name, Regions by Accounts, appear in the title bar, boxed in the succeeding figure.

 

 Tips

You can also use the Save Slice Icon  whenever you want to save the changes or modifications you made into the Slice.

 

 Tip

PowerOLAP’s default calculation mode is set to Manual. Thus, when you make changes to a Slice, you will need to Press F9 (or the calculator button on the menu bar) to see those changes reflected in the Slice.

You can change the calculation mode to Automatic by accessing the Options dialog from the Home tab then enabling the Automatic option as the calculation mode.

7.   From the PowerOLAP ribbon, go to Home tab then in the Edit control group, select the Options command. Then in the General tab, go to the Calculation mode section and enable the Automatic radio button.

8.   Click OK to return to the main application window.

Now you will see changes instantly on screen as they are made throughout the remainder of this manual’s exercises.