Export a Cube to Tabular Data

To facilitate moving and sharing data between Essbase and relational sources, it can be useful to generate flattened output from the Essbase cube. To accomplish this, you can perform a tabular export from Essbase.

If you have at least database update application permission, you can export a cube from the Essbase web interface into Excel, in tabular format. This exported tabular data is organized into columns with headers that Essbase can use to deploy a new multidimensional cube.

The exported tabular data differs from data exported into an application workbook. Exported tabular data consists of data and metadata, whereas application workbooks are highly structured and contain more information about the cube, such as cube settings and dimensional hierarchies.

The following is an example of CSV output resulting from exporting Sample.Basic to table format:

The column headers contain intrinsic relationships, in a logical order, enabling Essbase to detect the relationship patterns needed to build a hierarchy.

The cube you export must meet the following conditions:

• It must not be a scenario enabled cube.
• It must have a measures dimension, and the measures dimension must be dense.
• It must not have asymmetric (ragged) hierarchies. See Hierarchy Shapes.

If you export a cube containing shared members, those members are not added to the exported file.

To export a cube in tabular format:

1. In the Essbase web interface, expand the application that contains the cube that you want to export.
2. From the Actions menu, to the right of the cube name, select Export to Table Format.
3. Select whether to export dynamic blocks and click OK.

The column headers on the exported sheet are of the forced designation headers (hints) type.

You can import the tabular data file to create a new cube. See Transform Tabular Data to Cubes and Use Forced Designation Headers to Transform Tabular Data Into Cubes.