Outline Hierarchies

All Essbase database development begins with creating a database outline, which accomplishes the following:

Essbase uses the concept of members to represent data hierarchies. Each dimension consists of one or more members. The members, in turn, may consist of other members. When you create a dimension, you tell Essbase how to consolidate the values of its individual members. Within the tree structure of the database outline, a consolidation is a group of members in a branch of the tree.

For example, many businesses summarize their data monthly, rolling up monthly data to obtain quarterly figures and rolling up quarterly data to obtain annual figures. Businesses may also summarize data by zip code, city, state, and country. Any dimension can be used to consolidate data for reporting purposes.

In the Sample.Basic database included with Essbase Server, for example, the Year dimension comprises five members: Qtr1, Qtr2, Qtr3, and Qtr4, each storing data for an individual quarter, plus Year, storing summary data for the year. Qtr1 comprises four members: Jan, Feb, and Mar, each storing data for a month, plus Qtr1, storing summary data for the quarter. Similarly, Qtr2, Qtr3, and Qtr4 comprise the members that represent the individual months plus the member that stores the quarterly totals.

The database outline in Figure 2, Hierarchical Structure uses a hierarchical structure to represent the data consolidations and relationships in Qtr, as described in the previous paragraph.

Figure 2. Hierarchical Structure

This image shows the hierarchical structure of the data consolidations and relationships in Qrt1, as described in the text preceding the image.

Some dimensions consist of relatively few members, while others may have hundreds or even thousands of members. Essbase does not limit the number of members within a dimension and enables the addition of new members as needed.