Named sets

Another very interesting topic slightly related to calculated members is that of named sets. A named set is simply a set of members or tuples to which we assign a name. We define named sets to make it easier for users to build their queries, and also to help us as developers write more readable code.

Regular named sets

Let's take a look at an example of how named sets can be used. Our user might want to build an Excel report that shows detailed information about the sales of the current month, the sales of the previous one, and the total sales of the last three years. Without a named set, at each start of the month, the user would need to update the dates selected in the report in order to display the most recent month with data. In order to avoid having to do this, we can define a named set containing exactly the date range the user wants to see in the report that will never need manual updating. Here's how to do this:

First of all, since the Date Order dimension contains dates...