About Physical Dimensions and Physical Hierarchies

Most of time you'll import multidimensional data source dimensions and hierarchies into the physical layer rather than create them manually. In some cases you might need to add or modify a cube table's dimensions, hierarchies, and dimension properties.

In the physical layer, you can open a dimension to perform tasks such as modifying its name and description, and adding, removing, or modifying the hierarchies for that dimension. You can also add, remove, or edit columns that represent the dimension properties.

If a hierarchy isn't imported, any columns associated with that hierarchy are also not imported. If users need access to columns that aren't imported, you can either reimport the cube table from the data source, or you can add those columns to the physical layer by manually creating them and associate them with a level in a hierarchy.

The Oracle Analytics query engine supports unbalanced hierarchies for all multidimensional data sources. In most cases, you can configure unbalanced hierarchies in the physical layer by opening the hierarchy, selecting the hierarchy, and changing the hierarchy type.