Dimensions, Details and Measures attributes on TFS Workitem fields
Similar to the previous post this post spawns from an MSDN forum question about why added fields weren't showing up in the TFS warehouse.
In the XML schema for the fields there is an attribute 'reportable' which can take values of "dimension", "detail" and "measure". The value of "dimension", and "detail" should only be applied to integer, double, string and datetime fields and "measure" only to integer and double.
When you add a custom field or if you were to mark an existing field with the "reportable" attribute the next time the warehouse builds it will add these fields to the TFSWarehouse database. If it is a dimension it will show up in the [dbo.Work Item] table and if it is a detail it will show up in the [dbo.Current Work Item] table. The field name will match the refname of the field with the periods replaced by underscores.
Two important things to note.
- Once the reportable attribute for a field has been specified it cannot be changed.
- You can make a field reportable after it has been in use but only new revisions of the workitems containing that field will have the field value copied into the datawarehouse, prior versions will not get the current field value backfilled into it.
*http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms194942(VS.80).aspx - the cite for the above