In this post I will demonstrate the difference between “non empty” and “nonempty” in MDX. Not everyone knows the difference between these functions.

Lets write a simple MDX

SELECT { 
	[Measures].[Reseller Sales Amount], 
	[Measures].[Discount Amount] 
 } ON COLUMNS, 
 [Geography].[City].[City] ON ROWS 
 FROM [Adventure Works]

And the result will look like this

As you can see there are cities with no sales and no discount. If I add the “NONEMPTY” function I will remove all rows where both measures are NULL.

SELECT { 
	[Measures].[Reseller Sales Amount], 
	[Measures].[Discount Amount] 
 } ON COLUMNS, 
 NON EMPTY [Geography].[City].[City] ON ROWS 
 FROM [Adventure Works] 
 

But to remove all rows with NULL in discount amount I must use the “nonempty”. To make this work I will have to create a new measure that prints NULL if the value are 0 🙂

WITH MEMBER [Measures].[Discount Amount2]
 AS
 IIF([Measures].[Discount Amount] = 0, NULL, [Measures].[Discount Amount])
 
 SELECT { 
	[Measures].[Reseller Sales Amount], 
	[Measures].[Discount Amount2] 
 } ON COLUMNS, 
 NONEMPTY ([Geography].[City].[City], [Measures].[Discount Amount2]) ON ROWS 
 FROM [Adventure Works] 

The “NONEMPTY” and “NON EMPTY” can be replaced by a filter. Like this

WITH MEMBER [Measures].[Discount Amount2]
 AS
 IIF([Measures].[Discount Amount] = 0, NULL, [Measures].[Discount Amount])
 
 SELECT { 
	[Measures].[Reseller Sales Amount], 
	[Measures].[Discount Amount2] 
 } ON COLUMNS, 
 FILTER ([Geography].[City].[City], NOT IsEmpty([Measures].[Discount Amount2])) ON ROWS 
 FROM [Adventure Works]