Organizing Members to Optimize Data Extraction

Report Extractor extracts data in a certain order for Report Writer. If you do not require a formatted report and you are using Report Writer, you can reduce the time required to generate the report by using either of these strategies:

These strategies save the most time if used to create large production reports.

Report Extractor looks at data from bottom to top and right to left, starting from the bottom column member to the top column member and proceeding from the innermost row member (right) to the outermost row member (left).

In the following example, the column members come from dense dimensions and the row members from sparse dimensions. The sequence in which the report is read is represented by the numbers 1–3, which are in parentheses; for example, (1):

     Sales South

       (3) Actual    Budget (2)
              Jan       Jan (1)
         ========  ========
100–10        757       950
100–20        450       590
100–30   #MISSING  #MISSING
  100       1,207     1,540

To reduce the time to extract data, group dense dimensions first, then group sparse dimensions in the sequence in which they are displayed in the outline.

When dense dimensions are nested in the report columns, Report Extractor examines each data block only once, improving performance time.

Because attributes are sparse dimensions and are dynamically calculated, Essbase cannot use the sparse data extraction method when a report contains attribute dimensions.