Essbase provides two ways of invoking a calculation:
Regardless of how a calculation is triggered, Essbase can execute the calculation in one of two modes:
Serial calculation is the default. With serial calculation, each calculation pass is scheduled to run on a single processor. If invoked from a calculation script, the calculations are executed sequentially in the order in which they appear in the calculation script.
Parallel calculation breaks each calculation pass into sub-tasks. The sub-tasks that can run independently of one another are scheduled to run simultaneously on up to 64 or 128 threads. Block storage databases running on 32-bit platforms support up to 64 threads. Block storage databases running on 64-bit platforms and aggregate storage databases (whether running on 32-bit or 64-bit platforms) support up to 128 threads. Each thread may be on a different processor.
To change from the default serial calculation to parallel calculation, change, at most, two configuration settings and restart the server, or add an instruction to the calculation script.
The following topics discuss the details of parallel calculation.