Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Eventually the processing messages stop as processing completes. If there are errors, they require
troubleshooting, but if all succeeds, you can then close the dialog windows.
Configuring Cubes
After the cube has been created, the cube needs to be configured and validated. Configuring a cube means modifying
the cube to fit your needs, whereas validating a cube means verifying that the cube's configuration is viable.
The cube designer has various tabs that enable you to configure your cube. We describe the tabs in Table
11-1
.
Table 11-1.
The Tabs of the Cube Designer
Name
Description
Cube Structure
Sets the properties for measures and measure groups
Dimension Usage
Maps connections between each dimension and measure group
Calculations
Adds additional MDX calculations to your cube
KPIs
Adds key performance indicator measures to your cube
Actions
Adds additional actions such as drillthrough and hyperlinks
Partitions
Divides measures and dimensions for fine-tuning aggregations to be stored
on the hard drive
Aggregations
Finds which aggregations should be stored on the hard drive
Perspectives
Defines SQL view-like structures for your cube
Translations
Adds additional natural languages to the captions of your cube
Browser
Browses the cube from the development environment
As you advance in your BI solution developing abilities, you will find that each of these tabs holds something
of interest. The tabs we discuss in this chapter are Browser, Cube Structure, Dimension Usage, Calculations, and
KPIs. These first five tabs will keep us plenty busy. We discuss the other five tabs in Chapter 12.
The Browser Tab
The Browser tab is used for validating your cube configurations. To get to the Browser tab, access the cube
designer window and navigate to the last tab. Depending on your screen resolution, you may see only a few
letters with an ellipsis (. . .) indicating that the rest of the title is hidden (Figure
11-12
).
