Saving the Cube Metadata or Creating the Physical Cube

Introduction

When you are building a cube in the Cube Designer wizard, you can choose to save only the cube's definition to the active metadata or to save the cube's definition and build the cube. Your options depend on the following considerations:

Is the cube new?
Is the cube defined only in the metadata?
Does the cube physically exist?

New Cubes

If you are creating a new cube, the Finish page of the Cube Designer wizard contains these options:

Build physical cube now

builds the cube on the specified OLAP server.

Save the cube definition

registers only the cube definition to the current metadata repository, without building the physical cube. Use this option if you want to build the cube at a time of lower demand on the cube or the OLAP server.

Cubes Only Defined in the Metadata

If you are editing a cube that exists only in the metadata, the Finish page contains these items:

Build physical cube now

builds the cube on the specified OLAP server.

Save the cube definition

registers only the cube definition to the current metadata repository, without building the physical cube. Use this option if you want to build the cube at a time of lower demand on the cube or the OLAP server.

Cubes That Physically Exist

If you are editing a cube that physically exists, the Finish page contains these items:

Build physical cube now

saves definition changes to the current metadata and creates the physical cube. Any existing physical cube is deleted before the new cube is built. If the cube deletion fails, then the cube metadata is not updated.

Save the definition and delete the cube’s physical data

registers only the modified cube definition in the current metadata. Any existing physical cube is deleted, but the modified metadata is not used to build a new cube. If the deletion fails, then the cube metadata is not updated. You can use this option to delete a physical cube without changing the cube's definition; simply navigate to the Finish window without making any changes to the cube's definition.

Note: If a cube uses a shared dimension and the shared dimension has not been built, the only option on the Finish page is Save the cube definition.

Overview

The Export Code button opens the Export Code dialog box. Click Finish to process the cube and close the Cube Designer wizard. After processing, a standard SAS log window displays the short form of PROC OLAP that was submitted to create the cube.

Note: To perform tasks on the physical cube (such as deleting, rebuilding, and tuning), you must have the appropriate file access permissions at the operating system level. If you do not have access, contact your system administrator for more information.