11 Create and Manage Cube Outlines Using the Web Interface
An outline defines the structure of the cube through dimensions, members, attributes, and their properties. The outline structure, along with consolidation operators and formulas, determines how data is stored and calculated.
Dimensions and members represent data hierarchies. In an outline, each dimension consists of one or more members. The members, in turn, may have child members. This ancestral rollup is called a hierarchy. Unary operators (such as +, -, *, /), assigned to each member in a hierarchy define how a child member consolidates to its parent.