The cellSetTable Facelet tag

This tag renders an org.olap4j.CellSet instance. It mimics someway the behavior of <h:dataTable>: provides the main structure for displaying the CellSet and allows the page designer to specify the contents for each part of the table.

The tag’s structure is as follows:

<olap:cellSet value=”…” var=”cell”>

  <olap:columnAxis>

    <f:facet name=”header”>

      <!—

        This content is rendered in the headers

        of the column axis dimensions

      -->

    </f:facet>

    <!—

      This content is rendered in the members

      of the column axis dimensions

    -->

  </olap:columnAxis>

  <olap:rowAxis>

    <f:facet name=”header”>

      <!—

        This content is rendered in the headers

        of the row axis dimensions

      -->

    </f:facet>

    <!—

      This content is rendered in the members

      of the row axis dimensions

    -->

  </olap:columnAxis>

  <olap:dataCell>

  <!—

    This content is rendered in the cells

    of the CellSet

  -->

  </olap:dataCell>

</olap:cellSet>

This markup would produce the following HTML table, where the background color of the cell identifies the markup piece used to generate its content

		Region
		USA		Canada
		Measures
Gender	Promotions	Unit Sales	Store Cost	Unit Sales	StoreCost
Male	TV Spot	0	0	0	0
	Newspaper Ad	0	0	0	0
Female	TV Spot	0	0	0	0
	Newspaper Ad	0	0	0	0

The var attribute in the cellSetTable tag allows the page to use its value as a variable in EL expressions used within the children of the cellSetTable. This variable will refer to an instance of the CellSetItemInfo interface defined as follows:

interface CellSetItemInfo {

  public Hierarchy getHierarchy();

  public Member getMember();

  public List<Member> getPosition();

  public Cell getData()

  public Axis getAxis();

}

The following table shows, for each property of this instance, he areas of the table where such a property is non-null

axis	hierarchy	position	member	cell

The code below shows a simple example for a <olap:cellSetTable>

<olap:cellSetTable value=”#{olapSample.cellSet}” var=”cell”>

  <olap:columnAxis>

    <f:facet name=”header>

      <h:outputText value=”#{cell.hierarchy.caption}”/>

    </f:facet>

    <h:outputText value=”#{cell.member.caption}”/>

  </olap:columnAxis>

  <olap:rowAxis>

    <f:facet name=”header>

      <h:outputText value=”#{cell.hierarchy.caption}”/>

    </f:facet>

    <h:outputText value=”#{cell.member.caption}”/>

  </olap:rowAxis>

  <olap:dataCell>

    <h:outputText value=”#{cell.data.formattedValue}”/>

  </olap:dataCell>

</olap:cellSetTable>

The managed bean providing the CellSet would have the following structure.

@ManagedBean

@RequestScoped

public OlapSample {

  private OlapConnection cn;

  @PostConstruct

  public void init() {

    Connection jdbcCn = DriverManager.getConnection(“The olap4j connection string goes here”);

    cn = jdbcCn.unwrap(OlapConnection.class);

  }

  @PreDestroy

  public void tearDown() {

    if ( cn != null )

      cn.close();

  }

  public CellSet getCellSet() {

    return cn.createStatement().executeOlapQuery(“The MDX query goes here”);

  }

}

I use a RequestScoped in combination with @PostConstruct and @PreDestroy methods to open a connection to the olap4j server before any use of the bean, and close that connection once the request process lifecycle has ended.

In a real-world example the connection can be retrieved lazily, and we can store the resulting CellSet in a field to avoid executing the same query several times within the same request.