Re: OLAP Cube Testing
From: Rich Millman (rmillman_at_askallied.com)
Date: 01/17/05
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Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 17:02:23 -0500
OK, this topic could fill a couple of books, but I'll focus on some of the
key points. Since you say that nobody in your company knows anything about
cube building/testing, I will start from the beginning.
An OLAP cube is a mechanism to define (and optionally store) aggregations.
At it's lowest level, it aggregates data (facts or measures) according to
the various dimensions provided. An example of a fact would be sales, while
dimensions are what put your facts into context, such as product or time.
Cubes can do so much more than just aggregation, if you provide special
rules. I won't get into that here.
I assume that someone is providing the cube for you. In order to test the
cube, you must understand the business rules that went into the design and
creation of the cube. If the business rules are simple aggregation (sum),
then we work with the following:
In the relational database that provided the source for the cube, there is a
fact table and optionally dimension tables. The fact table must tie back to
the dimension tables. You should be able to generate a relational query
that returns the same results as your cube (as long as you are only
summing). A sample SQL Query would be:
Select sum(sales) from sales_table where product = 'turkey'
The above is a very simple representation, but with it, you then have one
dimension (it is assumed that the sales table has a product dimension in
it). And can get a total value. That value should match the value obtained
by the cube.
(Note everything mentioned above is for the simplest example, it could be a
whole lot different if you are doing complex equations or overrides within
the cube)
Tools to test the cube for data (in your situation) would be Excel, by
attaching to the cube and dragging and dropping the information into a pivot
table, or Analysis Server Manager. Neither of these tools requires you to
know MDX in order to return the data.
Hope this helps. If you need anything more specific, post again for help
and I'll send my address.
"Arindam Banerjee" <Arindam Banerjee@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:1BC36D9B-286B-430D-A39A-AA7FFFF285F7@microsoft.com...
> Hi Folks,
> this is my first mail in this site. I am a tester and I need to test an
> OLAP
> Cube. Nobody in our company knows anything about Cube Building and
> Testing.
> Could anybody tell me how to test a cube and what are the different
> critical
> areas of testing, I will be very obliged.
> Thanks,
> Arindam
>
> arindam2004@yahoo.com
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