Querying for Actions

OLE DB Programmer's Reference

The actions to be performed are stored with the data but exposed in the ACTIONS rowset. The rowset holds four significant pieces of information, as defined by the following columns: CUBE_NAME, ACTION_NAME, ACTION_TYPE, COORDINATE, and COORDINATE_TYPE.

Client applications should exercise caution when querying the ACTIONS schema rowset. Restricting the query as much as possible produces the most efficient results. The provider might return an error if a query is made without setting the required restriction on columns. For restriction requirements on the ACTIONS rowset, as well as for the restriction requirements on the other OLE DB for OLAP schema rowsets, see the description of columns in "Additions to IDBSchemaRowset," earlier in this chapter.

When to Query for Actions

Client applications should query for actions in response to user interface events, such as when displaying a context-sensitive menu. For example, if the user right-clicks the Sales dimension member, the client might query with the restrictions listed in the following table.

Restricted column	Contained value
CUBE_NAME	Sales
COORDINATE	[Products].[Beverages].[Soda]
COORDINATE_TYPE	MDACTION_COORDINATE_MEMBER
CATEGORIES	NULL

This would return the set of actions available on the [Products].[Beverages].[Soda] member, which the client application could then display in a context-sensitive menu.

Note   Each time the client application requests an action on an object, more computing resources are used, increasing the operation's overhead. Therefore, client applications should avoid querying for actions on a large number of objects, such as for every cell in a dataset. Restricting the query as much as possible produces the most efficient results.

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