Customizing a Time-based Partitioned Cube

You can customize a time-based partitioned cube to enhance performance by manually editing the .vcd file in any text editor. This ASCII file resides in the same directory as the control cube, under the same file name, and contains one line for each child cube in the group.

For example, you can remove child cubes in the following .vcd file, to exclude one or more of the eight cubes defined at the Quarter level from the time-based partitioned group:

cube "2006 Q1" .\PowerCube\2006 Q1.mdc
cube "2006 Q2" .\PowerCube\2006 Q2.mdc
cube "2006 Q3" .\PowerCube\2006 Q3.mdc
cube "2006 Q4" .\PowerCube\2006 Q4.mdc
cube "2007 Q1" .\PowerCube\2007 Q1.mdc
cube "2007 Q2" .\PowerCube\2007 Q2.mdc
cube "2007 Q3" .\PowerCube\2007 Q3.mdc
cube "2007 Q4" .\PowerCube\2007 Q4.mdc

Note: The paths defined in the .vcd file are relative to the location of the large control cube, as indicated by the leading dot:

cube
"2006 Q1" .\Cube\2006 Q1.mdc

. You can also specify a full path to each child cube:

cube "2006 Q1" C:\Transformer\Cube\2006
Q1.mdc

You can also create a time-based partitioned cube that is based on several different levels of the time dimension. For example, to improve run-time performance, your users might prefer to query against a cube that is based on a year cube, three quarter cubes, and a month cube.

To add these time-based partitioned cubes, you must first generate the child cubes for the specific time levels and then edit the .vcd file so that it contains only the required child cube references. When you have edited the .vcd file, the five remaining cubes in the .vcd file become accessible through the control cube:

cube "2006" .\Cube\2006.mdc
cube "2007 Q1" .\Cube\2007 Q1.mdc
cube "2007 Q2" .\Cube\2007 Q2.mdc
cube "2007 Q3" .\Cube\2007 Q3.mdc
cube "October" .\Cube\October.mdc