Accessing a OLAP variable in procedure

Question

Hi,
I have a olap variable which stores date datatype in my AW. I wanted to fetch teh value of this variable inside an pl sql procedure to do some date coparison. I know I can write a dml program which can intrun write the variable value to a table and then I can use it in procedure but I am looking for a way directly access this without writing to a table.?
Any help is appreciated.
Regards,

Answer 1

You can expose your OLAP variable as a SQL view, that you can then query as you would any other table/view.
Is your OLAP variable multidimensional? I could not get an OLAP_TABLE view to work on a non-dimensioned variable, but works just fine with a 1-dimensional variable.
As a simple example:
OLAP worksheet
DEFINE DATE_DIM DIMENSION TEXT
DEFINE DATE_VAR VARIABLE DATE <DATE_DIM>
MNT DATE_DIM MERGE '1'
DATE_VAR = TODAY
RPR DATE_VAR
DATE_DIM       DATE_VAR
1                    24MAR10SQL Developer/ SQLPLus
CREATE OR REPLACE FORCE VIEW "DATE_VAR" AS
SELECT * FROM table(OLAP_TABLE ('<YOUR_AW_NAME> duration query',
'DIMENSION ID FROM DATE_DIM
MEASURE DATE_COLUMN FROM DATE_VAR'))
MODEL
DIMENSION BY (ID)
MEASURES (DATE_COLUMN) RULES UPDATE SEQUENTIAL ORDER();Then you can query this view directly:
SELECT DATE_COLUMN FROM DATE_VAR
DATE_COLUMN
24/MAR/10