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Usage Note 14296: COMPACT_NWAY option added to PROC OLAP and OLAP Cube Studio

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In SAS 9.1.3, the COMPACT_NWAY option has been added to the PROC OLAP
statement. If specified, it will enable the OLAP procedure to perform an
additional summarization step that will decrease the size of the NWAY
aggregation and improve viewing performance. The amount of improvement
depends on the nature of the source data.

Candidates for compaction are cubes that are built from a star schema,
where levels are not defined for all columns in all dimension tables.
For example, assume that a cube is built from a star schema that
contains a Time dimension table. The Time table contains columns for
year, quarter, month, and day, along with a primary key column. If the
cube is defined such that the day column is not specified as a level of
a time hierarchy, then there are up to 31 key values that refer to each
unique combination of year, quarter and month. Together, these key
values define a unique leaf member of that hierarchy. These are the
values that may be summarized at build time. The cubes that are the
candidates for compaction are those with source data that contains
multiple keys for a single leaf member of a hierarchy.

The amount of compaction in the NWAY aggregation is determined by the
number of source rows that can be summarized. The number of summarized
rows depends on the number of unique key values in the fact table that
refer to the same leaf member of a hierarchy. Another compaction factor
is the number of rows in the fact table that contain unique combinations
of keys; these rows are not compacted.

In SAS 9.1.3 Service Pack 2, the ability to specify the COMPACT_NWAY
option is now surfaced within the OLAP Cube Studio interface under the
"Advanced" dialog within the "General" panel of the Cube Designer.

A fix for SAS 9.1.3 (9.1 TS1M3) for this issue is available at:

http://www.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/e9_sbcs_prod_list.html#014296

For customers running SAS with Asian Language Support (DBCS), this
fix should be downloaded from:

http://www.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/e9_dbcs_prod_list.html#014296


Operating System and Release Information

Product FamilyProductSystemSAS Release
ReportedFixed*
SAS SystemSAS OLAP ServerTru64 UNIX9.1 TS1M3 SP2
64-bit Enabled AIX9.1 TS1M3 SP2
OpenVMS Alpha9.1 TS1M3 SP2
64-bit Enabled HP-UX9.1 TS1M3 SP2
HP-UX IPF9.1 TS1M3 SP2
Linux on Itanium9.1 TS1M3 SP2
Linux9.1 TS1M3 SP2
z/OS9.1 TS1M3 SP2
64-bit Enabled Solaris9.1 TS1M3 SP2
Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server9.1 TS1M3 SP2
Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server9.1 TS1M3 SP2
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional9.1 TS1M3 SP2
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server9.1 TS1M3 SP2
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition9.1 TS1M3 SP2
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition9.1 TS1M3 SP2
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition9.1 TS1M3 SP2
Microsoft® Windows® for 64-Bit Itanium-based Systems9.1 TS1M3 SP2
Microsoft Windows NT Workstation9.1 TS1M3 SP2
Microsoft Windows XP Professional9.1 TS1M3 SP2
* For software releases that are not yet generally available, the Fixed Release is the software release in which the problem is planned to be fixed.