Improve cube processing time

Question

I've got a cube with around 6 facts and 40 dimensions. Right now my cube is taking 1 and half hour to process, and most of the time is taken by 2 facts. But now the users are asking for data which should not be more then an hour old. Now I'm thinking of storing the partitions of those 2 facts table in ROLAP(right now they are MOLAP)mode. Would it help in improving the cube processing time or I should look for another approach?Also, is it going to make much difference in query performance.

Answer 1

If the partitions are small, and the logic to access the ROLAP partition is fast (i. e. no complex views, etc.) the increased query time should not be dramatic. But in fact, you just should test, as there are many factors influencing performance.

Answer 2

You are on the right track. Partitions are the key to sink processing time. You have not specified how much facts you have (time-wise), but lets say you have a month worth of data. So one partition would be month - 1 latest day and the second partition would contain that latest day. You would only re-process this small partition every hour and process full cube once every day when there are no users online.

Partitions do help out when it comes to processing time.