Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
These two data calculation options give you the benefit of always producing the
freshest data based on the component values. They also help keep the database size
small by not storing data or only small amounts of data. What we mean here is that
with the use of dynamic calc and dynamic calc and store members you can help keep
the size of your database smaller because you are not storing all of the possible data
values for these members. A dynamic calc member stores no data in the database
and a dynamic calc and store member only stores the data as it has been calculated.
Stored members will store all data every time as it has been loaded or calculated,
regardless of if anyone ever actually requests it from the database or not.
There are several ways to request data from an Essbase database which will trigger a
dynamic calc member to create data. One is by performing a
Retrieve
of data using the
Essbase Add-in for Microsoft Excel, another way is executing an Essbase report script.
Yes indeed, dynamically calculated data is a nice thing to have, but you must also be
careful with its use. While dynamically calculated data offers greater accuracy, it can
also be a performance hog depending on the amount of data being requested and the
status of the component data involved in the calculation.
A good rule of thumb for dynamically calculated data is to make
sure you never calculate data whose component values are also
dynamically calculated. This situation can cause drastic performance
issues by hogging large amounts of memory to perform all of the
necessary calculations.
Essbase calculation terminology
Yes, we're at it again! In the previous chapter, you learned a new term that was
related to data intended for loading into an Essbase database. That term was
Essbase-friendly.
In this chapter, there are more terms you need to learn so you can sound like an
Essbase professional and also impress your co-workers. The new terms you will
learn in this chapter are Essbase calculation-related terms.
In the following sections, we explain the Essbase calculation script commands so
it will be helpful for you to become familiar with the calculation jargon first.
