Typically, you might sort your data by year
or month. However, by designating a time dimension in the Data Source Model Editor, you can filter on a variety of date ranges and relative date
options, such as previous periods, before [a user-defined period], after [a user-defined
period], current period, or next period.
Analyzer supports many types of relative date filters. To apply them to a level of a time hierarchy, you need to define the time-specific properties for that level. This is because each data warehouse implementation may have a different date format and set of time hierarchy levels.
These steps show you how to assign a time property to a dimension in a multidimensional model.