 The primary components of any OLAP products are cubes, dimensions,
members and data cell points.
A cube has a set of dimensions. In the example below, the dimensions
are Accounts, Months, Departments, Years and Versions. Data is stored at the data
cell (intersection) points of the members within the cubes.
Each dimension consists of a set of members. The
members of a dimension can be consolidated or aggregated along a hierarchy or many
hierarchies. This means that members can be aggregated in numerous ways. Each hierarchy
has levels and each level is made up of a set of members. The months dimension
would typically be January through to December, with aggregations for quarters,
half years and year. There could also be aggregations for year-to-date and average
year-to-date hierarchies.
A data cell point (multidimensional cell) is an intersection point
between members of different dimensions. The number of data points in a cube is
calculated by the product of the number of members of each dimension, of the cube.
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