Benefits of Federated Cubes

With a federated cube, you can bypass the process of loading data into an Essbase cube before performing aggregations and queries. Data storage and processing occurs within Autonomous AI Lakehouse, to take advantage of the benefits of Autonomous AI Database and also of Essbase's analytical features.

Bypassing regular data loads from relational data sources to Essbase can save you operational costs surrounding the extract, transform, load (ETL) pipeline (using rule files or other data load processes), and eliminates the need for outline restructuring.

With Autonomous AI Database, the database configuration, tuning, object storage, backups, and updates are all Oracle managed, so you can use Essbase in a federated cloud environment without spending time on infrastructure management.

Writeback is supported through Essbase to stored intersections. For example, the data values you submit using Smart View (or MDX Insert) are updated in the fact table on Autonomous AI Lakehouse.

You can also perform Essbase calculations and data loads, and Essbase will write SQL to update the fact table in Autonomous AI Lakehouse.

Data Storage Management in Federated Cubes

The data for your federated cube is stored in Autonomous AI Lakehouse. Either you can manage the data, or you can let Essbase manage it for you.

If you already use Essbase and are interested in trying a federated cube, consider making your existing Essbase database into a federated cube. In this situation, create an Essbase-managed federated partition.

If you're new to Essbase, and/or you already have an established workflow for updating your data in Autonomous AI Lakehouse, then a good solution is to manage your own federated cube data.

1. Decide which data storage option is best for your organization:
   • Essbase managed – Essbase creates a fact table while creating the federated partition, and manages it afterwards.
   • User managed – You set up your own fact table in Autonomous AI Lakehouse, using SQL or an Essbase data export.
2. If you want to let Essbase manage the Autonomous AI Lakehouse storage, enable the Essbase managed option by setting USERMANAGEDFEDFACT FALSE.

   Note:

   Set USERMANAGEDFACT FALSE before creating your federated partition. The option cannot be changed afterwards.

With Essbase managed data storage, you do not have to set up a fact table, because Essbase creates it for you. Additionally, Essbase manages the fact table. You do not have to delete and recreate the partition when you make outline changes.