When building or updating a SAS^® OLAP cube from the full input data, there are two variations of the PROC OLAP code that you can specify. Both versions are explained next.

Long form of the PROC OLAP code

To build a new cube for the first time, or to update a cube by deleting the original cube's physical data and metadata, you can submit the long form of the PROC OLAP code. Below is a template of what that syntax looks like:

This code can be obtained by exporting the long form of the PROC OLAP code for the cube from within SAS^® OLAP Cube Studio. You will need to add in the USERID and PW options to the METASVR statement.

Short form of the PROC OLAP code

After you have defined the structure for your SAS OLAP cube and you no longer need to update the dimension, hierarchy, levels, or measures, you can do regular data updates to the OLAP cube by using the short form of the PROC OLAP code. The short form of the code reads the cube metadata in order to obtain information about the cube such as the structure and path. In addition, the short form preserves cube-level permissions and member-level security information, as well as associations with other metadata objects such as information maps and reports.

The first PROC OLAP step below deletes only the physical cube data, preserving the cube's metadata. The second PROC OLAP step rebuilds the physical cube data from metadata.

Starting with SAS 9.2, the short form of the PROC OLAP code can also be exported from within SAS OLAP Cube Studio.

Using the short form of the PROC OLAP code when updating your SAS OLAP cube results in the following benefits:

• Maintains existing cube metadata.
• Retains any cube-level or member-level security defined to the cube.
• Allows the PROC OLAP code used in your regular cube update jobs to remain constant, even if the cube structure is updated. This is possible because there are no references to dimensions, hierarchies, levels, or aggregations in the short form version of the PROC OLAP code.

Operating System and Release Information