Excel BI Tip #27: CUBESET and CUBESETCOUNT Functions

In Tip #18, I talked about the CUBEMEMBER and CUBEVALUE functions which can be used to refer to cube data directly. In this tip, we will look at CUBESET and CUBESETCOUNT. These functions return sets that can be applied to the CUBEVALUE function like the CUBEMEMBER function. They allow you to create custom sets which can be used for calculations such as trailing 12 months, top 10 performers, or the number of customers with sales in 2009. Keep in mind that the advantage of using the CUBE functions with SSAS data is that it allows you to go beyond the limiting capabilities of pivot tables using that data and MDX.