What is an Attribute?
In MicroStrategy, an Attribute represents business concepts such as student, course, employee, fund, and organization. They provide the context on which to report and analyze business facts such as average GPA, total earned credit hours, and salary amount.
In a Grid report’s Report Objects panel, attributes are indicated with an aqua-colored diamond ⯁ before the attribute name.
What is an Attribute Form?
Attribute forms enable the grouping of multiple “pieces” of related information within a single attribute. Each attribute form is simply another column of data included with the attribute on your report. An Attribute must have at least one form, typically named ID (Identifier). Many attributes have two forms, typically named ID and DESC (Description).
Here is an example of the Stu Primary Campus attribute with two attribute forms: ID and DESC.
An attribute may have more than two forms. In fact, there is no limit to the number of forms an attribute may have. There is also no restriction on what the forms can be named. For example, the Stu Campus Address attribute has seven forms.
How to View Attribute Forms
In a Grid report’s Report Objects panel, on the left side of each attribute is a triangle icon. Clicking this icon expands the attribute and displays its components, or attribute forms.
You’ll see attributes listed in the same fashion in a Dossier’s Datasets panel. However, they do not expand to show attribute forms.
How to Display or Hide Attribute Forms on a Report
When placed on a report, each attribute displays a default set of attribute forms. Frequently, there are additional attribute forms that do not initially display. When you expand an attribute on the Report Objects panel, you see all available forms. The forms already displayed on your report are listed in gray, while the forms still available to include on your report are listed in black. For example, when the Course Sect College attribute is placed on a report, every attribute form except ID displays by default.
You can modify this default behavior and decide exactly which attribute forms to display on your report.
Example 1: Show a Hidden Attribute Form
- In the report results, right-click the attribute header (e.g., Course Sect College).
- From the menu, point to Attribute Forms, and select an unchecked form (e.g., ID).
Example 2: Hide a Shown Attribute Form
- In the report results, right-click the attribute header (i.e., Course Sect College).
- From the menu, point to Attribute Forms, and select a checked form (i.e., DESC).
How to Change the Display of Attribute Forms for Multiple Attributes
The above examples work well when you are making a small number of changes. However, if you want to make more changes to the default attribute form display, especially if you want to re-arrange the order of the attribute forms, or change multiple attributes at the same time, you can use the Attribute Forms editor.
- On the Data menu, select Edit Attribute Forms.
- On the Attribute Forms editor, click the Current Attribute drop-down and select an attribute. Click the check mark symbol on the right of the drop-down. All the forms for the selected attribute will be displayed.
- For each form listed, select or clear the corresponding checkbox in the Show on Grid column.
- (Optional) Use the Up and Down buttons to change the order of the forms.
- Click Apply. To modify another attribute, repeat steps 2-4.
- When finished, click OK.
Note: This editor may look slightly different if your report is not based on a cube dataset.