Using the ACTIONS Rowset

OLE DB Programmer's Reference

The ACTIONS rowset provides a standard mechanism for integrating OLAP tools with other applications. OLAP client applications typically provide rich interfaces for browsing data, but these are often closed systems, making it difficult to provide any level of integration between an OLAP client and theiroperational systems.

This ACTIONS rowset allows data residing in a multidimensional data store to be "linked" to processes appropriate to the data. For example, a grocery store might keep inventory information in a data store and might use any number of OLE DB for OLAP client applications from various vendors to analyze the data. Using the ACTIONS rowset as a vehicle for retrieving a predefined set of client-side actions, the database administrator can provide a link between inventory items and the store's purchasing application. When the client application presents a list of items in the inventory, the user can execute the predefined action to remedy a shortage. The process invokes the purchasing application and presents the user with a purchase order form. In another scenario, the predefined action might simply be a link to a URL, allowing the user, after viewing the inventory, to view purchase orders posted on the company's intranet.

Note   OLE DB for OLAP does not specify how client actions are created, stored, or processed in the OLE DB for OLAP provider. Instead, it specifies how client applications determine what client actions are possible on a given object and how the process is invoked. It's the provider's responsibility to associate the action with the data, and it's the database administrator's responsibility to determine how to store the action.

To execute client-side actions, the following steps are required:

1. The client application calls IDBSchemaRowset to query the ACTIONS schema rowset to determine what actions are allowed on a given object and makes the choice of actions available to the user. An action can be associated with cubes, dimensions, levels, members, cells, or sets.
2. When an action is selected, the client application executes a simple series of predefined steps to perform the action. For example, a client application might query the ACTIONS schema rowset to determine all of the actions that can be performed on a particular dimension.
3. The application determines the appropriate action, as defined in the ACTIONS schema rowset, to execute and then attempts to execute that action.

For more information about using the ACTIONS schema rowset, see the following topics:

• Querying for Actions
• Types of Predefined Actions
• COORDINATE Column Format in the ACTIONS Rowset

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