To do this more accurately you should use time series data mining models in SSAS and use DMX expressions to query the results, but this method is very simple and requires little effort, and will be pretty accurate so long as the data you’re modelling is fairly linear. Please note though that the more cyclical and seasonal your data is the less effective this will be.

The basic idea is that we take what we have done so far (i.e. year to date sales), look at how far through the year we are, and extrapolate the value of future months (or days/weeks/etc.) based upon values so far.

i.e. If we’re at March month end and we’ve sold 100 widgets so far this year, we’re 1/4 of the way through the year so we multiply 100 by 4 and get a prejected yearly total of 400.

This chart shows the concept of what we’re doing, and shows the full year prejections calculated in March (with 3 months of available data) and June (6 months of data). The projections obviously get more accurate the further you are through the year.

One of the points to note is that when creating a calculation like this, based upon a time dimension, the calculation should always work with any level of the dimension hierarchy selected. i.e. The user shouldn’t care whether they’re looking at a month, week, quarter or a day, the calculation should always work the same. To achieve this we simply use the .currentmember of the time hierarchy.

The following examples are based upon projecting the Internet Sales Amount measure found within the SQL Server 2008 Adventure Works DW sample cube.

Step 1 – What are our total sales so far this year?

MDX helpfully provides us with the YTD function which takes care of this for us.

  MEMBER [Measures].[YTD Sales] AS
    AGGREGATE(
      YTD([Date].[Calendar].CurrentMember)
      ,[Measures].[Internet Sales Amount])

This takes the current member of the Calendar hierarchy, and creates a set of all dates before it (this year) using YTD. It then aggregates (in this case sums) the Internet Sales Amount for all of these dates to calculate YTD Sales.

Step 2 – Which period are we in?

Here we’ll use the same YTD function to create a set of all dates so far this year, but in this case we’ll count the number of resulting members. Note that because we’re using the .CurrentMember of the hierarchy, it doesn’t matter if we’re looking at a date, week or month, the MDX will work. i.e. If we’re looking at 21 Jan it will return 21. If we’re looking at Q3 it will return 3, August will return 8 etc.

  MEMBER [Measures].[CurPeriod] AS
    COUNT(
      YTD([Date].[Calendar].CurrentMember)
      ,INCLUDEEMPTY)

Step 3 – How many periods are in the year?

If we coded this to only work with months then we could hard code this to 12 however we need to keep it generic to all levels of the hierarchy. So, we have to count all the cousins of the current time member [within this year]. Unfortunately there isn’t a Cousins function in MDX, and Siblings will only return other members within the same parent. i.e. siblings of May 4th would include May 1 through to May 31. To get around this we find the year of the current member by using the Ancestor function.

  ANCESTOR([Date].[Calendar].CurrentMember
  , [Date].[Calendar].[Calendar Year])

Then we find all of the descendants of the year, at the same level of the hierarchy (week/day/etc.) as the current member. We can then take a count as before.

  MEMBER [Measures].[TotalPeriods] AS
    COUNT(
      DESCENDANTS(
        ANCESTOR([Date].[Calendar].CurrentMember
          ,[Date].[Calendar].[Calendar Year])
        ,[Date].[Calendar].CurrentMember.level)
      ,INCLUDEEMPTY)

Step 4 – Calculate the Run Rate

Calculating the prejected yearly total (run rate) is then a simple calculation

  MEMBER [Measures].[Full Year Run Rate] AS
    [Measures].[YTD Sales]
    * ([Measures].[TotalPeriods]
       /[Measures].[CurPeriod])

You can then put the whole lot together and see the results…

WITH

  MEMBER [Measures].[YTD Sales] AS
    AGGREGATE(
      YTD([Date].[Calendar].CurrentMember)
      ,[Measures].[Internet Sales Amount])

  MEMBER [Measures].[CurPeriod] AS
    COUNT(
      YTD([Date].[Calendar].CurrentMember)
      ,INCLUDEEMPTY)

  MEMBER [Measures].[TotalPeriods] AS
    COUNT(
      DESCENDANTS(
        ANCESTOR([Date].[Calendar].CurrentMember
          ,[Date].[Calendar].[Calendar Year])
        ,[Date].[Calendar].CurrentMember.level)
      ,INCLUDEEMPTY)

  MEMBER [Measures].[Full Year Run Rate] AS
    [Measures].[YTD Sales]
    * ([Measures].[TotalPeriods]
       /[Measures].[CurPeriod])

SELECT
{
     [Measures].[Internet Sales Amount]
    ,[Measures].[YTD Sales]
    ,[Measures].[Full Year Run Rate]
    ,[Measures].[CurPeriod]
    ,[Measures].[TotalPeriods]
} ON 0,
{
    DESCENDANTS([Date].[Calendar].[CY 2003])
} ON 1
FROM [Direct Sales]

In my next blog I’ll be diong the same calculation in DAX for use with PowerPivot, stay tuned…

Frog-Blog Out

If we create a date related calculation (i.e. total to date) how do we ensure that this calculation works across all date dimensions?

Lets assume we have a stock movement measure, where each record in the fact table is the change in stock (plus or minus). The current stock level is found by using a calculation totaling every record to date.

CREATE MEMBER CURRENTCUBE.[Measures].[Stock Level]
AS
  SUM({NULL:[Date].[Calendar].CurrentMember}
     , [Measures].[Stock Movement]
  );

[Note that {NULL:xxx} just creates a set of everything before the xxx member, i.e. everything to date]

This works just fine, if the user selects the [Date].[Calendar] hierarchy. What if the user selects the [Date].[Fiscal] hierarchy, or the [Period] dimension? Basically the calculation wont work, as the MDX expression is only aware of the [Date].[Calendar] hierarchy.

The simple solution is to use the Aggregate function over all of the dimensions that the calculation needs to be aware of:

CREATE MEMBER CURRENTCUBE.[Measures].[Stock Level]
AS
  AGGREGATE(
      {NULL:[Date].[Fiscal].CurrentMember}
       * {NULL:[Date].[Calendar].CurrentMember}
       * {NULL:[Period].[Period].CurrentMember}
    , [Measures].[Stock Movement]
  );

The calculation will then use whichever date or time hierarchy is selected. It will even cope if multiple dimensions are selected, say the calendar on 0 and the periods on 1, both axis will honor the aggregation as expected.

Frog-Blog out.

CREATE MEMBER
   CURRENTCUBE.[Measures].[Test Measure To Date]
   AS "NA", VISIBLE = 1;
Scope([Date].[Calendar].MEMBERS);
    [Measures].[Test Measure To Date] =
      SUM(NULL:[Date].[Calendar].CurrentMember,
        [Measures].[Test Measure]);
End Scope;
Scope([Date].[Fiscal].MEMBERS);
    [Measures].[Test Measure To Date] =
      SUM(NULL:[Date].[Fiscal].CurrentMember,
        [Measures].[Test Measure]);
End Scope;

Essentially the warehouse was providing a transaction table with credits and debits, this calculated measure was supposed to provide the current balance, summing all transactions to date (not just the current year/period etc, but the entire history). Scope is used to enable the calculation to work across two different date hierarchies, calendar and fiscal.

The problem was that even when the [Date].[Calendar] hierarchy was selected, the code still used the fiscal hierarchy to calculate the value.

This is caused by the fact that [Date].[Fiscal].MEMBERS includes the member [Date].[Fiscal].[All]. Consequently, even when the Fiscal hierarchy was not included in the query, its [All] member was effectively still within the scope. Thus the fiscal calculation was overriding the calendar calculation no matter what was selected.

The solution to this is to exclude [All] from the scope, which can be done by changing the code to the following:

CREATE MEMBER
   CURRENTCUBE.[Measures].[Test Measure To Date]
   AS "NA", VISIBLE = 1;
Scope(DESCENDANTS([Date].[Calendar],,AFTER));
    [Measures].[Test Measure To Date] =
      SUM(NULL:[Date].[Calendar].CurrentMember,
        [Measures].[Test Measure]);
End Scope;
Scope(DESCENDANTS([Date].[Fiscal],,AFTER));
    [Measures].[Test Measure To Date] =
      SUM(NULL:[Date].[Fiscal].CurrentMember,
        [Measures].[Test Measure]);
End Scope;

DESCENDANTS(xxx,,AFTER) is a simple way of identifying every descendent of the hierarchy AFTER the current member, which is [All] when not specified.

Problem solved, Frog-blog out.