Sharing sets of data among reports: Intelligent Cubes

Intelligent Cubes are multi-dimensional cubes (sets of data) that allow you to use OLAP Services features on reports, as well as share sets of data among multiple reports. MicroStrategy Intelligent Cube Technology™ allows you to create these Intelligent Cubes, which operate within MicroStrategy Intelligence Server. On MicroStrategy's business intelligence platform, you have two unique methods to implement Intelligent Cube Technology:

Personal Intelligent Cubes: A personal Intelligent Cube is the Intelligent Cube functionality available in all pre-9.0 MicroStrategy releases. To use a personal Intelligent Cube, you can begin by creating reports in MicroStrategy as usual, and then analyze your reports with OLAP Services features such as view filters, derived metrics, and dynamic aggregation. These features are processed on the in-memory copy of data known as a personal Intelligent Cube, rather than being processed on the data warehouse.
Intelligent Cubes: A shared Intelligent Cube (called an Intelligent Cube) is a set of data that can be shared as a single in-memory copy, among many different reports created by multiple users. Rather than returning data from the data warehouse for a single report, you can return sets of data from your data warehouse and save them directly to Intelligence Server memory. The reports accessing Intelligent Cubes can use all of the OLAP Services features for analysis and reporting purposes.

Personal Intelligent Cubes and Intelligent Cubes provide two unique methods to improve the performance of your system with the use of Intelligent Cube Technology and OLAP Services. Each method provides this solution for different scenarios. Depending on your business intelligence requirements, use the information in this section below decide when to use each method.

The major differences between the two methods center around how each set of data is shared and the restrictions made in accessing the data warehouse. Personal Intelligent Cubes allow a single report to make use of OLAP Services while still being able to seamlessly access the data warehouse. In contrast, Intelligent Cubes provide access to a single set of data that can be shared among multiple reports and analyzed with OLAP Services, while reducing access to the data warehouse. These differences are described in more detail in Deciding when to use personal Intelligent Cubes and Intelligent Cubes.

The following topics provide you with more insight into how personal Intelligent Cubes and Intelligent Cubes work, and when to use each approach to meet the needs of your business intelligence system: