Oracle 11g OLAP & SQL

Question

Hi All
Our company is in the process of doing a POC warehouse where we are using Oracle OLAP extensively for summary management. I have been tasked with porting all our existing reports (Cognos) from using an Informix backend to start using Oracle. The OLAP team has created some cube views for me but Im struggling to get my around how Im going to use them for reporting purposes.
Example
1) Im using the following sql (abbreviated) to get my data:
select
v_product.product_description.
v_product.level_name,
v_sales.sales,
v_sales.calc_measure
from v_product, v_sales, v_location, v_time
where ... all the joins....
v_product.level_name in ('DEPARTMENT', 'CLASS')
and v_location.level_name = 'TOTAL'
and v_time.level_name = 'TOTAL'
2) This brings back data that looks like:
product_description level_name sales calc_measure
MEAT DEPARTMENT 232323 23.56
POULTRY DEPARTMENT 43444 35.23
BEEF CLASS 232323 23.56
CHICKEN CLASS 67455 35.23
LAMB CLASS 73444 23.56
PORK CLASS 55555 35.23
3) I need to create a list report thats grouped by department and for each department shows all the classes but off the data above is very difficult. I cannot just select the all the class values and then do the aggregation in the report as there is a calculated measure so I need to select the value for that level from the cube view. Is it possible in one sql statement or will I need more?
Thanks for any ideas

Answer 1

Dave thanks for your reply. Please excuse my poor example this was my first day using cube views and I cannot login to my work setup from home so going by memory alone.
To answer your question
1. We are using 11g AW
2. I don't remember the exact cube view names but not relevant to my question (I think)
3. Alas the oracle forums don't support much formatting else I would have provided an ascii example. I have uploaded the sample report output here http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk145/angusgoosemiller/sample.gif
Better Example
1. From what I can gather if your query more that one level in the same dimension from a cube view you get the results denormalized as rows. So effectively for my report I what the department and class levels from the product hierarchy where class is a child of department and some relevant measures one of which is a calculated measure. If I select this from the cube view I am getting results in the form:
DEPARTMENT LEVEL ... row values
DEPARTMENT LEVEL ... row values
CLASS LEVEL ... row values
CLASS LEVEL ... row values
2) My report is a list report that is grouped by department and for each department all the class records are displayed with the measures. There must also be a department total for every department level and a grand total for the report. If the calculated measure was not included I could just return all the class records as the there is a department attribute defined that is also in the cube view and calculate all the department values dynamically in the report. However due to the calculated measure and probably as a best practice from a performance/redundancy perspective I only want to select from the cube view in its aggregated form like is currently happening.
3) From a report design perspective this provides some challenges as relationally hierarchy levels are normally modeled as columns and we use to process calculated measures dynamically in the report. Going forward we would like all the calculations etc happening in the OLAP engine.
4) So basically the way I see it I need the following from the cube:
4.1) The department records
4.2) The class records
4.3) the department total records
4.4) the grand total record for all departments
Can I get that in one SQL statement in such a manner that I can produce a report? How would an oracle based reporting solution get the data, via sql or directly from the cube via the olap api.
Thanks for your help I really appreciate any advice!
Cheers
Angus