Overview: Populating an Analytic Workspace

To use an analytic workspace, there must be data in it. There are two basic types of data: fact data and dimensions. Fact data is stored in variable workspace objects; dimensions, containing dimension values, are stored in dimension workspace objects.

Variables and dimensions can be populated:

• By loading data from relational tables. For example, you might load sales fact data into a variable from a sales fact table, load time dimension values from a time dimension table, customer dimension values from a customer dimension table, and product dimension values from a product dimension table.
• As the result of a calculation. For example, a sales forecast variable might be populated using the results of a forecasting function.
• By loading data from flat files using data loaders controlled through the OLAP DML.
• Manually, although this method is typically used only to enter a small number of values.

To explicitly populate data objects in an analytic workspace, take the following steps:

1. Specify the values for each dimension. These values provide indexes to the actual data, which is stored in analytic workspace variables.
2. Specify the values for each relation. These values indicate the relationships between dimensions.
3. For variables that provide the source data for your application, specify the actual data values.

You can populate an analytic workspace using programs written using the SQL command and data loading commands. The OLAP DML commands that you typically use to populate data objects are listed in the following table.

Command	Description
= or SET	Assigns the results of an expression to a variable, option, or relation. For more information, see "Assigning Values to Data Objects" and "Using Models to Calculate Data".
MAINTAIN	Adds, deletes, renames, moves, or merges values in a dimension; and adds, deletes, and merges values in a composite. For more information, see "Maintaining Dimensions and Composites".
FILEREAD	Stores the data that is read from an input file into a dimension, composite, relation, or variable. For more information, see Chapter 11, "Reading Data from Files".
SQL	Retrieves data from relational tables into a dimension or variable. For more information, see Chapter 10, "Working with Relational Tables".
IMPORT	Copies workspace data and definitions from an EIF file.