Cube of people that are alive during a given time period

Question

I have a requirement to have data analysed based on a range. The best example would be: give me the number of people that were alive on a given period (time dimension).

I know how to deal with the "Born date".
I know how to deal with the "Death date".

I'm not sure how to deal with the "alive anytime during a given period". Since the Time Dimension can deal with days, weeks, months, quarters, years, etc.

The data that would satisfy a given period would be:

• People that were not dead at the start of the period
• People that were born anytime in that period

Other examples would be: orders that had an un-shipped state during a period, call centre calls that were opened (not closed) during a period, etc.

The analysis would be used by managers to identify periods in a given year were more (or less) staff would be required.

Answer 1

I didn't find a way to achieve what I wanted using SSAS. Instead, I created created a table (or view) with the data I needed for this cube:

I have 1 row for each day that the person was alive.

I used the same idea for dealing with similar problems: - Call Center: calls per day: calls that were open (at any point in time) per day. - Shipping: in-transit per day: orders that were in wait state in the warehouse and waiting to be shipped per day.

Answer 2

You can always use an MDX range expression : [Member1]:[Member2]