How to fill out result in MDX - Mondrian

Question

In MDX how do you fill out with zeros the null/empty values, example:

If I have a dimension A and two measures X and Y, after MDX query I got this:
("-" represents "null" or "empty" values)

       X   Y
A.A1   1   - 
A.A2   -   2
A.A3   -   - 

If I use "NON EMPTY" A.A3 is gone, but when trying to use CoalesceEmpty to fill out with zeros I got this:

       X   Y
A.A1   1   0 
A.A2   0   2
A.A3   0   0 

Suppose that there are too many tuples like A.A3 and I don't want to show then, how do i fill out the empty values with zero and do not show the tuples that are empty in all the columns.

the result must be:

       X   Y
A.A1   1   0 
A.A2   0   2

Note: I did try with filter but I didn't get any improvement

Answer 1

I am not sure if that is supported in Mondrian, but in Analysis Services, you could use HAVING on the row axis like this:

SELECT {Measures.X, Measures.Y}
       ON COLUMNS,
       A.Members
       HAVING Measures.X <> 0 AND Measures.Y <> 0
       ON ROWS
  FROM MyCube

In contrast to NON EMPTY which only looks at empty (i. e. NULL) values, for HAVING, you can state the condition yourself. And in Analysis Services a numeric comparison treats NULL the same way as zero, hence teh above condition excludes null and zero.

Another approach - slightly depending on the client tool - would be to stay with the MDX using NON EMPTY and not to use CoalesceEmpty, but convert the NULL values to 0 via the FORMAT_STRING. This requires the client tool to use the format string or formatted value as delivered by the cube, and not to implement its own number formatting.

Answer 2

I was misusing the 'FORMAT_STRING'!, i was applying just one format, thanks to this link http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/2715b737-a9a5-4094-8235-df71e92b7bb2/how-to-remove-null-values-in-mdx that refer to this link http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms146084.aspx

the correct format for numeric values is:

FORMAT_STRING = '#0;;;0'

where the last value is the format for null values