Assignment Operator

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In the OLAP DML, as in many other programming languages, the = (equal) sign is used as an assignment operator.

An expression creates temporary data; you can display the resulting values, but these values are not automatically saved in your analytic workspace. When you want to save the result of an expression, then you store it in an object that has the same data type and dimensions as the expression. You use an assignment statement to store the value that is the result of the expression in the object.

Like other programming languages, an assignment statement in the OLAP DML sets the value of the target expression equal to the results of the source expression. However, an OLAP DML assignment statement does not work exactly as it does in other programming languages. Like many other OLAP DML statements it does not assign a value to a single cell, instead, when the target-expression is a multidimensional object, Oracle OLAP loops through the cells of the target object setting each one to the results of the source-expression. Additionally, you can use UNRAVEL to copy the values of an expression into the cells of a target object when the dimensions of the expression are not the same as the dimensions of the target object.

For more information on using assignment statements in the OLAP DML, see SET and SET1.