If a hierarchy is balanced, then all of its branches descend to the same level, and each member has a parent level that is positioned immediately above it. However, hierarchies are not always balanced, and sometimes they contain missing hierarchy members. To manage missing hierarchy members, you can use these four options, which were created specifically for ragged hierarchies:

If EMPTY= or IGNORE_EMPTY are specified, then the values of EMPTY_CHAR= and EMPTY_NUM= are ignored within the scope of the hierarchy or level.

When you create a cube, you can set some options that can be used to optimize cube creation and query performance. If you set the options in the PROC OLAP statement, then the settings are applied to all aggregations in the cube. If you set the options in the AGGREGATION statement, then the options apply to that specific aggregation. Options set for individual aggregations override any options set in the PROC OLAP statement.

Here are the options:

For an explanation of these options, see the PROC OLAP statement and the AGGREGATION statement.