In the next section, we will see how to use the Add Business Intelligence wizard in SQL Server Data Tools to implement currency conversion. This wizard can be useful when we decide to implement currency conversion inside the Analysis Services cube itself. However, this is not always the best choice, as we are going to explain in this section.

Generally speaking, it's always better to perform any currency conversion during the ETL phase. However, this is usually only feasible when data will only ever be displayed in one reference currency—in other words, when the end user is not able to modify the currency to be used to display aggregated data. This does not mean we do not need to have a currency dimension in our cube because it could be useful to know the original currency of the transactions. It only means that aggregated data will always be displayed in the same currency, regardless of any selection made on any dimension.

For example, end users could...