IBM Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks: MDX to Copy a View

August 26, 2025

As a model developer, it’s very important to have separate development and production environments that replicate each other as much as possible. This sometimes leads to a situation where you may need to create the same view in both environments. In situations where there are only a few dimensions within a cube, it’s very easy to manually create a view in each environment. But what about situations when your cube has a lot of complexity such as a large number of dimensions with many elements?

The easiest way to replicate a view is to reference the related MDX expression. Revelwood has created many blog posts and webinars to learn MDX, but the easiest way to start learning – and to solve this issue – is to simply copy the expression. This is done by opening/creating a view and then clicking the MDX icon on your ribbon.

This can be done in both IBM Planning Analytics Workspace (PAW) and IBM Planning Analytics for Excel (PAfE):

Once clicked, an MDX editor will appear on your screen. The editor allows you to copy the expression and then paste it into another environment. As long as the dimensionality and elements are the same in each environment, the expression will work in both.

This approach will allow you to quickly replicate views between environments without having to perform any formal migration steps.

Revelwood is an IBM Gold Business Partner with more than 30 years of experience designing, developing, implementing and maintaining IBM Planning Analytics environments. We focus on solutions for the Office of Finance and have partnered with clients of all sizes across all industries to optimize, enhance and expand their use of Planning Analytics. Revelwood’s Planning Analytics team consists of PA experts with decades of experience, and we have been recognized via awards including IBM Champion status.Stay up to date with PA – sign up for our weekly Planning Analytics Tips & Tricks newsletter, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and join our IBM Planning Analytics All-Stars group on LinkedIn.

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Ivan Cepero

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