String Expressions (MDX)
Details
In InterSystems MDX, a string expression can have any of the following forms:
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A string literal (a double quote character, followed by any characters, followed by another double quote character). For example: "label" or "my property"
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A numeric literal.
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An expression that uses an MDX function to return a string. These functions include:
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PROPERTIES, which returns the value of a property of a member. For example: homed.city.magnolia.PROPERTIES("Population")
See the reference section Intrinsic Properties for intrinsic properties that you can use.
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IIF, which returns one of two values, depending on the value of a given logical expression.
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LOOKUP, which looks up a given key in a term list and returns a substitute string.
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%LOOKUP, which returns one value from a term list.
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An expression that refers to a string-valued measure. For example, suppose that you define a calculated member as follows:
CREATE MEMBER patients.measures.stringtest AS 'IIF(MEASURES.[avg test score]<60, "low","high")'
Then the expression MEASURES.stringtest is a string expression.
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An expression that uses the MDX concatenation operator (+) to combine other string expressions. For example:
"string 1 " + "string 2"
For another example:
"Pop: " + homed.city.magnolia.PROPERTIES("Population")
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A reference to a pivot variable that contains a string value. To refer to a pivot variable, use the following syntax:
$VARIABLE.variablename
Where variablename is the logical variable name. Do not enclose this expression with square brackets. This syntax is not case-sensitive; nor is the pivot variable name.
For information on defining pivot variables, see Defining and Using Pivot Variables.
Uses
You can use string expressions in the following ways:
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As an argument to the ORDER function or to the PROPERTIES function.
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As an element of a set.
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As the definition of a calculated member (in this case, a measure).