To quickly and easily design storage options and aggregations for a cube, use the Storage Design wizard. The wizard takes you through steps to specify the following options:
Select one of the following storage options:
Each storage option has advantages and disadvantages. For more information, see Storage Modes (MOLAP, ROLAP, HOLAP).
Select a method of controlling the number of aggregations the wizard will create. Then let the wizard create the aggregations.
Aggregations are precalculated summaries of cube data that help enable Microsoft® SQL Server™ OLAP Services to provide rapid query responses. You should create aggregations for all of your cubes. The question is how many.
The goal is to create the optimal number of aggregations. This number should not only provide satisfactory response time but also prevent excessive cube size. A greater number of aggregations produces faster response time but also requires more storage space. Moreover, as the wizard creates more and more aggregations, earlier aggregations produce considerably larger performance gains than later aggregations. Therefore, control the number of aggregations the wizard creates by one of the following methods available in the wizard:
For more information about aggregations, see Aggregations.
To start the Storage Design wizard
The final step of the wizard allows you to process or defer processing. Depending on the size of the cube, processing may take considerable time.