The simplest and most direct approach to pivot data from rows into columns within a cube calculation view is to use restricted columns (also known as restricted measures). This feature is specifically designed for this purpose. You can create a separate restricted column for each year (e.g., 2021, 2022, 2023) based on the original sales measure. Each restricted column will have a filter applied to it based on the 'YEAR' attribute. This method is declarative, easy to implement in the graphical editor, and is the standard best practice for this common reporting requirement, making it the simplest solution.

A. Create a filter expression that uses an OR operator.

This would only filter the rows to include the specified years but would not transform the row values into separate columns for each year.

B. Create 3 calculated columns.

While functionally possible using IF or CASE statements, this is more complex than using restricted columns and is not considered the simplest or most optimized approach.

C. Implement a union node and map each year as a separate column.

A union node combines result sets vertically (adds rows). Using it to create columns is a highly complex and inefficient workaround, not a simple approach.

1. SAP HANA Cloud

SAP HANA Database Modeling Guide for SAP Business Application Studio

Section: "Creating Restricted Measures".

The guide states

"Restricted measures allow you to filter a measure by one or more dimensions... This is a common requirement in reporting

for example

to show the revenue of the current and the previous year side-by-side." This directly validates that using restricted measures (columns) is the intended and standard method for the scenario described in the question.

2. SAP HANA Modeling Guide for SAP HANA Studio (HANA 2.0 SPS 07)

Section: "Create Restricted Columns".

This document explains

"You can restrict the values of a measure based on the values of one or more attributes... For example

to view the net sales for a specific region

you can create a restricted column on the net sales measure and restrict the values for a specific region." This confirms the purpose of a restricted column is to create a new measure column based on a filter condition

which is precisely what is required to create a separate sales column for each year.