Cube Advisor: Cube Recommendations

The Cube Recommendations page provides you with a list of recommended Intelligent Cubes, and allows you to select which Intelligent Cubes to create.

Review the recommended Intelligent Cubes and, based on their dynamic sourcing benefits, determine which Intelligent Cubes should be created. You can review recommended Intelligent Cubes in one of the following ways:

Without an Enterprise Manager file: If you use just a Metric Level file, information on recommended Intelligent Cubes includes the number of reports that can connect to the Intelligent Cubes.
With an Enterprise Manager file: If you provide an Enterprise Manager file in addition to a Metric Level file, information on recommended Intelligent Cubes includes weighted rankings for recommended Intelligent Cubes and performance benefits accruing from building the recommended Intelligent Cubes.

Without an Enterprise Manager File

If you did not provide an Enterprise Manager file as part of the analysis, the information used for recommending Intelligent Cubes is the number of reports that can connect to Intelligent Cubes. The analysis page shows columns for the number of reports and the cumulative number of reports that can connect to Intelligent Cubes. This information is useful because two Intelligent Cubes may have an overlap in the set of reports they connect to. This overlap allows you to choose one Intelligent Cube over another when creating the Intelligent Cubes. The recommendations also include detailed information about the attributes, metrics, and reports that make up the proposed Intelligent Cubes.

The Intelligent Cube area provides the following information:
Index: A sequential list of recommended Intelligent Cubes.
Number of Reports Covered: Total number of reports that can connect to a particular Intelligent Cube.
Cumulative Reports Covered: The overlap in the number of reports that can connect to different Intelligent Cubes.
The Objects area provides the following information:
Attributes: This column displays the attributes that are included in the Intelligent Cube.
Metrics: This column displays the metrics that are included in the Intelligent Cube.
Reports: This column provides a list of reports that can connect to the Intelligent Cube.

If you place your cursor over the names of any of the attributes, metrics, or reports, you can see the location of these objects in your project.

With an Enterprise Manager File

This Cube Recommendations page provides a visual summary of the reports analyzed by the Cube Advisor tool. It also provides suggestions on the performance benefits of building the recommended Intelligent Cubes. The summary area is divided into three areas:

The area at the top titled Summary of Estimated Performance Enhancement provides a summary of the estimated performance improvements that would come from building the selected set of Intelligent Cubes. The graphs provide the following information:
The bar graph in the top left corner represents the percentage of database time that will be reduced by creating the recommended Intelligent Cubes.
The second bar graph shows the number of jobs covered by the recommended Intelligent Cubes. Jobs represent tasks that will not have to be executed against the data warehouse if the recommended Intelligent Cubes are created.
The Pie chart shows the proportion of jobs grouped by those that will run against a database, cache, and Intelligent Cubes. If you choose to create a subset of the recommended Intelligent Cubes instead of all the recommended Intelligent Cubes, you can see how that will increase the percentage of database jobs and affect the Pie chart.
The area in the middle of the report summary shows a Microchart representation of the statistics information on:
- Jobs: The number of tasks that will not have to be executed against the data warehouse if the Intelligent Cube is created.
- Result Row: The number of rows of data for all reports that can be returned from the Intelligent Cube rather than the data warehouse.
- Users: The number of users that execute the reports that can connect to the Intelligent Cube if the Intelligent Cube is created.
- Database Time: The amount of time to execute SQL statements and retrieve the results from the data warehouse that is saved if the Intelligent Cube is created.
To the right of the Microchart described above, statistics about report overlap across Intelligent Cubes are displayed. Cube Advisor may recommend Intelligent Cubes that have an overlap in the reports they cover. This overlap display allows you to choose one Intelligent Cube over another when deciding which Intelligent Cubes to create.
The area at the bottom of the report summary lists recommended Intelligent Cubes, along with columns for the number of reports that can connect to Intelligent Cubes, percentage of reports that can connect to Intelligent Cubes, number of attributes and metrics to be included in the Intelligent Cube, number of users and jobs that can connect to a specific Intelligent Cube, amount of database time that would be saved by building the Intelligent Cubes, and the size of the largest report covered by the Intelligent Cube in terms of the number of rows.

Each Intelligent Cube recommendation includes a Microchart which represents the subset of reports that can connect to the Intelligent Cube. The horizontal length of the Microchart from the beginning to the end represents the set of reports covered by the Intelligent Cube. A bar in the Microchart depicts that the report is covered by the Intelligent Cube and no bar means that the report is not covered by the Intelligent Cube.

You can move your cursor over each bar to view the report name and some of the statistics information for each report.

After making appropriate selections for the Intelligent Cubes you want to create, click Create Cube Design.

Accessing Saved Intelligent Cube Recommendations

You can look at these Intelligent Cube recommendations at any time and build Intelligent Cubes from the set of recommended Intelligent Cubes.