Customizing A Time-Based Partitioned Cube; Exclude Measures From A Cube - IBM Cognos User Manual

In other words, after the model structure changed, the older child cubes were
locked and were therefore not updated with the new data. The control cube
combined data stored in the newest child cube and therefore could update the
parent value in the time-based partitioned cube.

Customizing a Time-based Partitioned Cube

You can customize a time-based partitioned cube to enhance performance by
manually editing the .vcd file in any text editor. This ASCII file resides in the same
directory as the control cube, under the same file name, and contains one line for
each child cube in the group.
For example, you can remove child cubes in the following .vcd file, to exclude one
or more of the eight cubes defined at the Quarter level from the time-based
partitioned group:
cube "2006 Q1" .\PowerCube\2006 Q1.mdc
cube "2006 Q2" .\PowerCube\2006 Q2.mdc
cube "2006 Q3" .\PowerCube\2006 Q3.mdc
cube "2006 Q4" .\PowerCube\2006 Q4.mdc
cube "2007 Q1" .\PowerCube\2007 Q1.mdc
cube "2007 Q2" .\PowerCube\2007 Q2.mdc
cube "2007 Q3" .\PowerCube\2007 Q3.mdc
cube "2007 Q4" .\PowerCube\2007 Q4.mdc
Note: The paths defined in the .vcd file are relative to the location of the large
control cube, as indicated by the leading dot: cube "2006 Q1" .\Cube\2006 Q1.mdc.
You can also specify a full path to each child cube: cube "2006 Q1"
C:\Transformer\Cube\2006 Q1.mdc.
You can also create a time-based partitioned cube that is based on several different
levels of the time dimension. For example, to improve run-time performance, your
users might prefer to query against a cube that is based on a year cube, three
quarter cubes, and a month cube.
To add these time-based partitioned cubes, you must first generate the child cubes
for the specific time levels and then edit the .vcd file so that it contains only the
required child cube references. When you have edited the .vcd file, the five
remaining cubes in the .vcd file become accessible through the control cube:
cube "2006" .\Cube\2006.mdc
cube "2007 Q1" .\Cube\2007 Q1.mdc
cube "2007 Q2" .\Cube\2007 Q2.mdc
cube "2007 Q3" .\Cube\2007 Q3.mdc
cube "October" .\Cube\October.mdc

Exclude Measures from a Cube

You can customize a PowerCube or cube group by excluding certain measures so
that they cannot be viewed in the OLAP reporting components. You can remove
them entirely, or you can hide them from specific user groups defined in your
configured Cognos namespace. In such cases, all measure values are retained in the
cube, but the restricted dimensions cannot be accessed by the excluded users.
For example, suppose your cube summarizes your sales data for sporting goods. In
addition to 2006 sales, there are measures for product cost and 2005 sales, which
your users do not need. You decide to exclude these last two measures from the
cube.
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Chapter 6. Creating PowerCubes