Defining Cubes

Cubes and measures

A cube is a collection of identically dimensioned measures. When you define a cube, you identify information such as the following:

• The name of the cube and the fact table associated with it. All measures in a cube must be from a single fact table.

• The names of the dimensions and the levels in the dimension hierarchies that will be used in the cube.

• The names of the measures and the columns in the fact table where the values for each measure is stored.

• Default aggregation operators for each dimension of each measure (such as sum or average).

• Any calculation dependencies.

Cubes and measures are defined entirely in the OLAP metadata; there are no corresponding database objects. In OLAP Services, measures are created in which to cache the data for analysis and display.

Procedure: Defining cubes

Follow these steps to create a cube:

1. Start Oracle Enterprise Manager and access OLAP management, as described in "Procedure: Accessing OLAP management".

2. Right-click on Cubes, then choose one of the following:
   • Create Using Wizard to run the Cube Wizard

     or

   • Create to edit a new cube property sheet

3. Choose Help if you need additional information.

Figure: Cube property sheet

The following figure shows the General page of the cube property sheet.

Related information

Search for the following topics in Oracle Enterprise Manager Help for information about creating cubes:

"Creating Cubes"

"Cube Management"

"Cube Property Sheet"

"What Is a Cube?"