Solve order specification is defined in MDX Solutions: With Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services by George Spofford as

A higher number indicates that the member is calculated using the values that result from the calculations that have a lower number.

In some cases, it is important to determine whether the values should be totalled and the calculation applied to that total result, or whether the calculation should be applied to the values, and the results are included in the total. The predefined solve_order for the VisualTotals function is −4096, which is important when determining the order of your calculations.

In the following example, the calculation being performed is <value> + 100000:

WITH 
  MEMBER [Measures].[My Calculation] AS 
         [Measures].[ActualSum] + 100000, SOLVE_ORDER = -5000
SELECT 
  {[Measures].[ActualSum], [Measures].[My Calculation]} ON COLUMNS,
  VISUALTOTALS(ADDPARENTS([Geography].[Country].MEMBERS, POST), "Total *") ON ROWS
FROM 
  [SalesCube]

The calculated measure is executed before the visual totals (−4096), which means that, for every measure, 100000 is added to it and then these values are totaled.

The following query and results demonstrate what happens when solve order is not applied, using the default value of 0 instead.

WITH 
  MEMBER [Measures].[My Calculation] AS 
         [Measures].[ActualSum] + 100000
SELECT 
  {[Measures].[ActualSum], [Measures].[My Calculation]} ON COLUMNS,
  VISUALTOTALS(ADDPARENTS([Geography].[Country].MEMBERS, POST), "Total *") ON ROWS
FROM 
  [SalesCube]

In this case, the measures are totaled first and then the calculated measure is applied to add 100000 to it.

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