About Quick Analytic Views

Classifying Fact Table Columns

The Quick Analytic View wizard classifies as measures the fact table columns that have the most distinct values. The wizard determines the cardinality of each column. It classifies as measures those columns that have a cardinality that is higher than the median cardinality of all of the columns.

The wizard classifies as attribute dimensions those that have a cardinality that is lower than the median cardinality. Also, if the fact table column has a foreign key constraint, then that column is classified as an attribute dimension.

Using Existing Attribute Dimensions or Creating New Ones

For each fact table column that is classified as an attribute dimension, you may choose whether to create a new attribute dimension or use an existing one.

You can use an existing attribute dimension if either of these conditions is true:

• The fact table column matches an attribute of an existing attribute dimension.

• The fact table column matches the foreign key constraint of the source of an existing attribute dimension.

If you use an existing attribute dimension, then the wizard includes any hierarchies defined for that attribute dimension in the analytic view it creates.

If you create a new attribute dimension, then the wizard does one of the following at run time:

• Creates a view based on the fact table column.

• Uses an existing table in the current schema that matches a foreign key constraint of the fact table.

If the fact table has no foreign key constraints that relate a column to another table in the schema, then the wizard creates a view to be the source for the new attribute dimension. The view has only one column, which contains all of the distinct values of the fact table column. The attribute dimension has only one attribute and one level. Also, the wizard creates a hierarchy that it contains only that level and the automatically generated ALL level..

If an existing table matches a foreign key constraint of the fact table, then the wizard uses that table as the source for the attribute dimension. The wizard defines an attribute of the attribute dimension for each column of the table. The wizard specifies the primary key column of the table as the only level in the attribute dimension and defines only one hierarchy that uses the level.

After the wizard creates the attribute dimensions, hierarchies, and analytic view, you can edit an attribute dimension to add other levels and you can create other hierarchies and add them to the analytic view.