Aliases are stored in one or more tables as part of a database outline. An alias table maps a specific, named set of alias names to member names. When you create a database outline, Essbase creates an empty alias table named Default. If you do not create any other alias tables, the aliases that you create are stored in the Default alias table.
You can create an alias table for each set of outline members. When you view the outline or retrieve data, you can use the alias table name to indicate which set of alias names you want to see. Identifying which alias table contains the names that you want to see while viewing an outline is called making an alias table the active alias table. See Setting an Alias Table as Active.
For Unicode-mode applications, setting up a separate alias table for each user language enables users to view member names in their own language. See Understanding the Essbase Unicode Implementation.