Glossary: Glossary

Glossary

aggregation: a summary of detail data that is stored with or referred to by a cube. Aggregations support rapid and efficient answers to business questions.
ancestor: within a dimension hierarchy, a member that resides at a higher level in relation to other members in the hierarchy. For example, if a Geography dimension includes the levels Continent, Country, and City, then Europe and France would be ancestors of Paris, and Asia and Thailand would be ancestors of Bangkok.
Application Response Measurement: the name of an application programming interface that was developed by an industry partnership and which is used to monitor the availability and performance of software applications. ARM monitors the application tasks that are important to a particular business. Short form: ARM.
ARM: See Application Response Measurement.
calculated member: in a dimension, a member whose value is derived from the values of other members.
cell: in a cube, the intersection that is defined by selecting one member from each dimension of that cube.
child: within a dimension hierarchy, a descendant in level n-1 of a member that is at level n. For example, if a Geography dimension includes the levels Country and City, then Bangkok would be a child of Thailand, and Hamburg would be a child of Germany.
cube: a logical set of data that is organized and structured in a hierarchical, multidimensional arrangement. A cube is a directory structure, not a single file. A cube includes measures, and it can have numerous dimensions and levels of data.
descendant: in a dimension hierarchy, a member that resides at a lower level in relation to other members in the hierarchy. For example, if a Geography dimension includes the levels Country, State, and City, then California and Los Angeles would be descendants of USA.
detail data: nonsummarized (or partially summarized) factual information that pertains to a single area of interest, such as sales figures, inventory data, or human-resource data.
dimension: a group of closely related hierarchies. Hierarchies within a dimension typically represent different groupings of information that pertains to a single concept. For example, a Time dimension might consist of two hierarchies: (1) Year, Month, Date, and (2) Year, Week, Day. See also hierarchy.
dimension table: in a star schema, a table that contains the data for one of the dimensions. The dimension table is connected to the star schema's fact table by a primary key. The dimension table contains fields for each level of each hierarchy that is included in the dimension.
drill down: in a view of an OLAP cube, to start at one level of a dimension hierarchy and to click through one or more lower levels until you reach the data that you are interested in.
drill up: in a view of an OLAP cube, to start at one level of a dimension hierarchy and to click through one or more higher levels until you reach the level of summarized data that you are interested in.
drill-through table: a view, data set, or other data file that contains data that is used to define a cube. Drill-through tables can be used by client applications to provide a view from processed data into the underlying data source.
fact: a single piece of factual information in a data table. For example, a fact can be an employee name, a customer's phone number, or a sales amount. It can also be a derived value such as the percentage by which total revenues increased or decreased from one year to the next.
fact table: the central table in a star schema. The fact table contains the individual facts that are being stored in the database as well as the keys that connect each fact to the appropriate value in each dimension.
hierarchy: an arrangement of members of a dimension into levels that are based on parent-child relationships. Members of a hierarchy are arranged from more general to more specific. For example, in a Time dimension, a hierarchy might consist of the members Year, Quarter, Month, and Day. In a Geography dimension, a hierarchy might consist of the members Country, State or Province, and City. More than one hierarchy can be defined for a dimension. Each hierarchy provides a navigational path that enables users to drill down to increasing levels of detail. See also member and level.
leaf member: the lowest-level member of a hierarchy. Leaf members do not have any child members.
level: an element of a dimension hierarchy. Levels describe the dimension from the highest (most summarized) level to the lowest (most detailed) level. For example, possible levels for a Geography dimension are Country, Region, State or Province, and City.
MDX language: See multidimensional expressions language.
measure: a special dimension that contains summarized numeric data values that are analyzed. Total Sales and Average Revenue are examples of measures. For example, you might drill down within the Clothing hierarchy of the Product dimension to see the value of the Total Sales measure for the Shirts member.
member: a name that represents a particular data element within a dimension. For example, September 1996 might be a member of the Time dimension. A member can be either unique or non-unique. For example, 1997 and 1998 represent unique members in the Year level of a Time dimension. January represents non-unique members in the Month level, because there can be more than one January in the Time dimension if the Time dimension contains data for more than one year.
metadata server: a server that provides metadata management services to one or more client applications. A SAS Metadata Server is an example.
MOLAP: See multidimensional online analytical processing.
multidimensional expressions language: a standardized, high-level language that is used to query multidimensional data sources. The MDX language is the multidimensional equivalent of SQL (Structured Query Language). Short form: MDX language.
multidimensional online analytical processing: a type of OLAP that stores aggregates in multidimensional database structures. Short form: MOLAP.
NWAY aggregation: the aggregation that has the minimum set of dimension levels that is required for answering any business question. The NWAY aggregation is the aggregation that has the finest granularity. See also granularity.
ODBO: See OLE DB for OLAP.
OLAP: See online analytical processing.
OLAP schema: a group of cubes. A cube is assigned to an OLAP schema when it is created, and an OLAP schema is assigned to a SAS OLAP Server when the server is defined in the metadata. A SAS OLAP Server can access only the cubes that are in its assigned OLAP schema.
OLE DB for OLAP: an OLAP API that is used to link OLAP clients and servers by means of a multidimensional expressions (MDX) language. Short form: ODBO. See also multidimensional expressions language.
online analytical processing: a software technology that enables users to dynamically analyze data that is stored in multidimensional database (MDDB) tables. Short form: OLAP.
parent: within a dimension hierarchy, the ancestor in level n of a member in level n-1. For example, if a Geography dimension includes the levels Country and City, then Thailand would be the parent of Bangkok, and Germany would be the parent of Hamburg. The parent value is usually a consolidation of all of its children's values.
result set: the set of rows or records that a server or other application returns in response to a query.
SAS ARM interface: an interface that can be used to monitor the performance of SAS applications. In the SAS ARM interface, the ARM API is implemented as an ARM agent. In addition, SAS supplies ARM macros, which generate calls to the ARM API function calls, and ARM system options, which enable you to manage the ARM environment and to log internal SAS processing transactions. See also ARM (Application Response Measurement).
SAS format: a pattern or set of instructions that SAS uses to determine how the values of a variable (or column) should be written or displayed. SAS provides a set of standard formats and also enables you to define your own formats.
SAS informat: a pattern or set of instructions that SAS uses to determine how data values in an input file should be interpreted. SAS provides a set of standard informats and also enables you to define your own informats.
SAS Management Console: a Java application that provides a single user interface for performing SAS administrative tasks.
SAS OLAP Cube Studio: a Java interface for defining and building OLAP cubes in SAS System 9 or later. Its main feature is the Cube Designer wizard, which guides you through the process of registering and creating cubes.
SAS OLAP Server: a SAS server that provides access to multidimensional data. The data is queried using the multidimensional expressions (MDX) language.
SAS Open Metadata Architecture: a general-purpose metadata management facility that provides metadata services to SAS applications. The SAS Open Metadata Architecture enables applications to exchange metadata, which makes it easier for these applications to work together.
schema: a map or model of the overall data structure of a database. An OLAP schema specifies which group of cubes an OLAP server can access.
slice: a subset of data from a cube, where the data in the slice pertains to one or more members of one or more dimensions. For example, from a cube that contains data about customer feedback, one slice might pertain to feedback on one particular product (one member of the Product dimension). Another slice might pertain to feedback on that product from customers residing in particular geographic areas who submitted their feedback during a certain time period (one member of the Product dimension, multiple members of the Geography dimension, one or more members of the Time dimension).
SMP: See symmetric multiprocessing.
SQL: See Structured Query Language.
Structured Query Language: a standardized, high-level query language that is used in relational database management systems to create and manipulate database management system objects. Short form: SQL.
symmetric multiprocessing: a hardware and software architecture that can improve the speed of I/O and processing. An SMP machine has multiple CPUs and a thread-enabled operating system. An SMP machine is usually configured with multiple controllers and with multiple disk drives per controller. Short form: SMP.
thread: a single path of execution of a process in a single CPU, or a basic unit of program execution in a thread-enabled operating system. In an SMP environment, which uses multiple CPUs, multiple threads can be spawned and processed simultaneously. Regardless of whether there is one CPU or many, each thread is an independent flow of control that is scheduled by the operating system. See also symmetric multiprocessing, thread-enabled operating system, and threading.
Time dimension: a dimension that divides time into levels such as Year, Quarter, Month, and Day.
tuple: a data object that contains two or more components. In OLAP, a tuple is a slice of data from a cube. It is a selection of members (or cells) across dimensions in a cube. It can also be viewed as a cross-section of member data in a cube. For example, ([time].[all time].[2003], [geography].[all geography].[u.s.a.], [measures].[actualsum]) is a tuple that contains data from the Time, Geography, and Measures dimensions.
wizard: an interactive utility program that consists of a series of dialog boxes, windows, or pages. Users supply information in each dialog box, window, or page, and the wizard uses that information to perform a task.

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