ABSTRACT

The ability to use Structured Query Language (SQL) with Essbase has been available since the early years; however, since most administrators were end users and not part of the information technology (IT) group, SQL was not widely used. As IT has gotten more involved with building cubes, Essbase has increasingly interfaced with other applications. The features and functionality of Essbase itself have expanded, and thus, the need for administrators and developers to have an understanding of SQL has increased. This chapter presents some of the basics of SQL and then expands to Essbase-specific use cases including dimension building and loading data (load rules) and exporting data back to relational targets. Reading the chapter also will make you a better developer with Essbase Studio, allowing you to customize data load SQL and drill-through reports SQL, making it more efficient, and helping you understand user-defined tables and filtering conditions in Essbase Studio. We will not go into Essbase Studio in great detail, as that is beyond the scope of this chapter.