Local Cubes
Local cubes are appropriate in situations in which an Analysis server is unavailable. A local cube is stored in a single, portable file that can be stored on both server and nonserver computers. End users can browse local cubes without a connection to an Analysis server. Local cubes are the only variety of cube that provides this capability.
Local cubes are based on tables. Local cubes do not have aggregations or contain partitions.
The storage mode of a local cube can be either multidimensional OLAP (MOLAP) or relational OLAP (ROLAP). If the storage mode is MOLAP, end users can browse the local cube without a connection to its source data.
Unlike other varieties of cubes, a local cube is not an object in the object hierarchy shown in the Analysis Manager tree pane.
After a local cube is created, if its source data changes, the local cube can be refreshed to incorporate the new version of the source data.
You can use Microsoft® Excel 2000 to create, refresh, and browse local cubes. In Excel, local cube files are called offline cube files. For more information, see the Excel documentation.
By default the file extension associated with local cube files is .cub.