Overview

The Maximum number of flattened rows option for the SAS OLAP Server enables you to control the maximum number of flattened rows, or two-dimensional results sets, that are returned. This setting has no affect on multidimensional result sets.

The OLE DB for OLAP design specifications describe two kinds of OLAP query result sets: multidimensional and flattened. Most OLAP applications receive their query results as multidimensional result sets. There are two main exceptions when flattened results will be returned.

Drillthrough

Drillthrough queries are two-dimensional queries against a relational table. As such, they can only be requested as flattened result sets.

 

SQL Passthru

When using SQL Passthru to query a cube, an MDX, or multidimensional expression, is passed via the SELECT statement to the OLAP server. However, SQL only understands how to process rows and columns from a two-dimensional table. Therefore, when SQL Passthru is used to query a cube, the resulting data will be returned as a flattened result set.

Summary

The Maximum number of flattened rows option controls the size of the result set returned when a drillthrough or SQL Passthru is performed on an OLAP cube. This setting has nothing to do with the type of cube storage used, including how the ROLAP aggregations are processed.

Changing the default setting

You can change the default setting for the Maximum number of flattened rows option from within SAS^® Management Console.

1. Under Server Manager, navigate to the node for your OLAP server. This is the physical OLAP server and is located by drilling down from the top of the Server Manager tree view.
2. Right-click on the node and select Properties.
3. In the SAS OLAP Server Properties dialog box, click the Options tab, and then the Advanced Options button.
4. In the Advanced Options dialog box, click the Server tab and enter the preferred value for the Maximum number of flattened rows option. By default, this value is set to 300,000 rows.

Operating System and Release Information