Parent-child dimensions in SQL Server 2005 with Analysis Services MDX

Parent-child dimensions in SQL Server 2005 solve the common business problem of defining records in a particular table related to other records within the same table. For example, each employee has a direct supervisor, who in turn has her own supervisor, all the way up to the enterprise owner or the chief executive officer. Similarly, if your business serves institutional customers, then each entity could be a "child" of another larger organization or division. So the smallest customer could be a sub-department, which rolls up to a department, group, market, region, division and finally the full organization.