O3 Builder is the component responsible for building the cube files from the models defined in O3 Designer.

The building of the cubes can be complete (full) or incremental.

The full build can be done directly from O3 Designer, using the Generate Cube option the the File menu, or with the O3 Builder.

The incremental build can only be done with the O3 Builder.

O3 Builder can send information about the final status of builds through e-mail. In the model definition, you can determine e-mail recipients based on the build type (incremental or complete) and the build result (OK or errors).

Using the model definition, you can also determine who should be informed in different situations such as: complete updating OK, incremental updating OK, or errors.

You can also specify that in the case of certain errors, such as when the database source for retrieving data is inaccessible, the build should retry a given number of times after a given interval.

See Defining Build Actions

Full Builds

When you execute the build from O3 Designer, the generated cube corresponds to the model currently active in O3 Designer.

Incremental Builds

Use an incremental cube build to update the information in the cube. This avoids complete rebuilds of cubes with lengthy build times.

For incremental builds, it is very important to verify the Input set configuration and the constructions parameters.

Datasources that belong to an incremental input set should provide only new data to the cube. If they provide information already in the cube, that information will be duplicated.

SQL datasources can limit the data retrieve using WHERE clauses combined with Parameters defined in the model. For instance, there could be conditions that limit the data based on timestamps, invoice numbers, etc.

During incremental builds the model definition used is the one stored in the cube itself. This means that any change in the .mdl file requires a full build before any incremental build.

Example

Consider an incremental build for a cube with sales information. Every day new data is added to the cube with information of the previous day. The SQL sentence that retrieves the data could be defined using date limits and the followint parameters:

Besides, O3 keeps track of the previous value of every parameter. Therefore it would be possible to refer to a parameter as follows:

This means that both the current and previous values of a parameter can be used in the WHERE clause.

For isntance:

Notice that these parameters are not predefined. They need to be created in the General Panel for the Model. See Defining Parameters