Cube Extension

The primary purpose of the Cube Extension element is to make it possible for you to modify the OLAP cube after the cube has deployed onto SSAS, without having to uninstall and re install the cube. In situations in which the OLAP cube has been fully processed with years of data, recreating the cube is time consuming because all partitions have to be fully reprocessed.

The Cube Extension element can define the following elements:

• NamedCalculation
• ManyToManyRelationship
• KPI
• Measure
• Action
• CustomMdx

Each customization that is defined in a Cube Extension element can also be defined in a SystemCenterCube object. The only customization that is not allowed is the addition of facts or measure groups and substitutions to the cube.

• The CUBE operator adds a summary row for every combination of groups specified. It also adds a summary row to the end of the result set that summarizes the entire result set.
• When you use the CUBE operator, you can’t use the DISTINCT keyword in any of the aggregate functions.
• You can use the GROUPING function with the CUBE operator to determine if a summary row has a null value assigned to a given column