AS - Create Dimensions

Dimension Data: Before designing the Dimension, thoroughly familiarize the data related to the functioning organization.
In AdventureworksDW database DimEmployee table has foreign key relationship between ParentEmployeeKey column and EmployeeKey column and this Self Referencing relationship indicates that Employee is parent-child dimension.
Right click on the table and select "Explore Data" to view the data in different forms (Table, Chart,Pivot Table and Pivot Chart).

Creating Standard Dimension:

Must use the "Dimension Wizard" to create the initial structure of the dimension. Though the Wizard, you will select data source tables, the key attributes and other attributes that you want to include in the dimension.

Most cases the wizard design will not complete. After creating the dimension design, then wizard can be used repeatedly to enhance the dimension.

Creating Dimension include following steps:

1) Selecting the Creation Method

  

2) Specify Source Information, select the Data Source view and then Main Table list all the tables that are part of the Data Source View. The Main table of dimension must contain the column(s) you will use to create the key attribute of dimension.
In this Scenario, Select the "DimProduct" table as Main table, by default the "Key column" and "Name Column" displays primary key "ProductKey" as the Key Attribute column.
Every attribute has a member name. The member name is the text appears in a report or a web browser, so these names to be meaningful and descriptive name and another column that has an integer key that uniquely identifies each member. This is particularly true for key attributes.
Every attribute has two properties:
(i) KeyColumns references the column (or columns, in the case of a composite key) that uniquely identifies an attribute member
(ii) NameColumn references the column that contains the descriptive labels.
For many key attributes, the integer key will be used as KeyColumns and another descriptive column will be used as NameColumn. By default, Analysis Services uses the same column for the member key and for the member name. You can, however, specify a member name that's different that the key. Since the ProductKey column is just a unique integer that doesn't convey any information about the product to report viewer, you will choose the ProductID column that contains the product's catalog number and date the product was introduced to be the attribute name as the name of the attribute.