Microsoft KB Archive/927166

= Description of variant data types that are returned for calculated members in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services =

Article ID: 927166

Article Last Modified on 3/8/2007

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services

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INTRODUCTION
This article describes variant data types that are returned for calculated members in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services. The variant data types that are returned for calculated members in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services may not match the data types that are returned for similar calculated members in SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services when both calculations use standard formatting. In order to make sure that calculated members in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services return data in the desired format, the format string for the calculated member should be explicitly specified.

For example, assume that the following measures exist in a cube.

The calculated member SalesRevenue/SalesQuantity would return a Currency data type in SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services but would return a Numeric data type in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services.



MORE INFORMATION
SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services is supported on operating systems that do not have built-in support for variant mathematical operations. The Analysis Services service and the Pivot Table Service component contain custom logic to handle these mathematical operations. Therefore, the Analysis Services service and the Pivot Table Service component return variant data types for calculated members in SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services.

However, SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services is supported only on operating systems that have built-in support for variant mathematical operations that are handled by Automation libraries. Most variant mathematical operations are handled by Automation functions. The Automation functions include VarDiv, VarMul, VarAdd, and VarSub.

SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services does contain some optimizations for special cases. These special cases include the following:
 * Operations that involve a cell that has an empty string.
 * Variant functions that return #INF instead of the error condition.

The following table lists the variant data types that are returned for calculated members in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services. These variant data types are listed according to common mathematical operations.

Subtraction operations
Keywords: kbhowto kbsql2005as kbexpertiseadvanced kbinfo KB927166

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