Building a Virtual Cube
To build a virtual cube quickly and easily, use the Virtual Cube Wizard. The wizard takes you through a series of steps to specify cubes, measures, and dimensions used for your virtual cube.
You select the cubes that contain the data you want in your virtual cube. A cube is a set of data organized and summarized into a multidimensional structure defined by measures and dimensions. The virtual cube creates a combined view of your selected cubes by including the measures and dimensions that you select.
The measures you select are the measures that will be available to end users of your virtual cube. A measure contains numerical data (for example, Sales) viewed and analyzed by end users. Each measure corresponds to a column in the fact table of a selected cube. This column supplies the values of the measure.
The dimensions you select are the dimensions that will be available to end users of your virtual cube. Dimensions are descriptive categories by which the measures can be separated for analysis. In tabular browsers, they provide the column headings, row headings, and subheadings by which the measures are separated and displayed to end users. (In graphical browsers, they provide other types of descriptive labels but with the same function as in tabular browsers.) For example, if the measure is Sales, and the dimensions are Time, Location, and Product, end users can separate Sales into the categories of Time, Location, and Product. Time provides headings for individual years and subheadings for months. Location and Product also supply a variety of headings and subheadings.
Each dimension is created from one or more columns in a dimension table. These columns supply the values of the dimension, which produce the column headings, row headings, and subheadings seen by virtual cube users.
Note A virtual cube based on a linked cube does not support the custom rollup operators, custom rollup formulas, cell calculations, or custom member formulas contained in the linked cube.
To start the Virtual Cube Wizard