Hello

Think of 3 facttables on which 3 Cubes base. A forth virtual cube calculates
a measure by adding 1 measure from each cube (m4=m1+m2+m3). Would it be
better to join the 3 facttables into one and only build 1 cube?

Thanks for help.

Technically it's possible, but you know that.

You need to think about maintenance and business requirements before making
your decision. There is a whole bunch of questions you can ask yourself like
- What will be the security implications? (will I create a security
nightmare); how many new measures will get added every now and then? (If you
stay with 3 cubes will you have to add new measures for each cube instead of
for just one?); do any of the cubes have dimensions the others don't?; What
king of partition strategy will you implement to compensate for any virtual
cube speed benefits? Are all cubes updated at the same time? (would the
failure of the process that builds m2 impact on the cube build if there was
only one cube?) and so on..

More business orientated questions may be - can the users see the physical
cubes individually?; have the cubes been split up for different business
users? (the users may us the cubes in different ways, affecting the partition
strategy); which measures can they see? (again security)

Just because you can do something doesn’t always mean you should (look how
Jurassic Park turned out). Contemplate the reasons behind the question, the
implications in carrying out the question, and if the benefits outweigh the
costs then do it.

Personally, when I think about these things, if the business doesn’t have
any problems with it and it reduces my workload and (especially) maintenance
I do it.

Hope this helps you find your answer.

Hi all:

Personally, if the bsuiness procceses are not the same, not the same
granularity, i wouldn´t do it.

Can you comment a little bit more about your specific scenario?


--
Alejandro Leguizamo
MVP SQL Server
Colombia

"Ofri" <Ofri (AT) discussions (DOT) microsoft.com> wrote