One of these Smart Views is not like the other, one of these things does not belong

You must look for the clew

A hat tip must be given to Gary Adashek aka @GADASHEK for it is his hard work and (apparently) incessant nagging that got this superduper feature.  See, mega multinational colossus software companies do listen to their customers.

Have a looky loo at the below two screenshots.

More than one red herring

Things you should discount:

• Excel 2013 versus Excel 2010
• Slightly different formatting styles (I used the bold red for data to show that I could write to an intersection via a ugly filter)
• Cell C3 versus B5

Do you see it?

Standard

Something new has been added

Still can’t see it?  That’s not very Holmesian.  

Gotcha!

Perhaps the subtle visual hints below help.

Going walkies

Let’s clear out that grid.

Click on “Insert Attributes” and the magic occurs.  

There they are, the five attribute dimensions from Good Old Sample Basic aka MVFEDITWWD.  No more guesing or going into the Member Selection dialog.  Finally!

There is one teensy weensy problem

That Insert Attributes selection?  It performs a retrieve.  Sample.Basic retrieves the top of the house on 0.016 seconds but for all of my love of this database, it isn’t exactly a real world example.

How do I know that Insert Attributes does this?  I know because I tried this out on an ASO database with 15 attribute dimensions (I swear, not my design) and Smart View…went away for a while.  Bummer.

Imagine that retrieve against a BSO database.  Double bummer.

Could Oracle fix this?  Absolutely – just turn off the retrieve when the dimensions are on the sheet.  It isn’t as though the data value would be any different and the function would be faster, much faster.  Also that would give the user a chance to remove the attributes he doesn’t want.  Surely this is possible, says the geek who actually has zero idea how hard this is.  Never let it be said that I let my ignorance get in the way of my wishes.  Oops, wait…

How do you get this?  It’s as easy as pi.

Simply download the latest version of Smart View.  For those of you reading this in December 2015, that’s release 11.1.2.5.510.  What could be easier?

Again a big thanks

Gary Adashek is the one to thank, not yr. obt. svt. as I would have figured this out in approximately eleventy billion years.

This is pretty cool and proof that Smart View’s progress continues apace.

Be seeing you.