Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Analysis Services Step by Step

Creating a Finance Cube

A finance department often deals in terms of financial reporting—profit and loss statements, balance sheets, and so forth. Creating an OLAP cube for use in financial analysis is tricky because of the way account values aggregate: sometimes accounts sum to a parent, sometimes an account is subtracted from its parent, and sometimes an account does not aggregate into the parent value at all. Consider, for example, a profit and loss report.

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The components of Net Profit are Gross Profit and Expenses. Both are positive numbers. But, to calculate Net Profit Total, you must subtract the Expenses Total value ...