IBM BPM, V8.0.1, All platforms > Authoring services in Integration Designer > Developing monitor models > What are monitor models? > Dimensional models
Cubes
A cube is a multidimensional representation of the information needed for online analytical processing. The dimensional model overlays a cube structure on a monitoring context definition, which defines the way that information collected by monitoring context instances is stored. To perform dimensional analysis in the dashboards, use Cognos with Business Monitor.
Cubes contain the measures and dimensions. When you create a monitoring context, a cube is automatically created and associated with the new monitoring context. Within the cube, you specify the metrics that you want to track (such as order amount), the aggregation function to apply to each metric to create a measure (such as average order amount or total number of orders), and the dimensions you want (such as order time, location, and sales representative).
A simplified cube is shown in the following image:
The cube shown in the image has only one fact, order amount. Two measures are based on this fact: average order amount and total number of orders. Based on this cube, you could perform dimensional analysis relating the measures to dimensions. You could, for example, find the average order amount (a measure) for all orders that were placed in a specific location (a dimension) such as the United States. At a more detailed level, you could determine the average order amount for Nebraska by sales representative Sally for the last 30 days.
The following measure and dimensions are added to each cube automatically when a monitor model is deployed to Business Monitor:
- InstancesCount measure: The number of instances of the monitoring context.
- CreationTime dimension: The creation time for each context instance. Specifically, this dimension is a collection of the creation time attributes from each event that created a monitoring context instance.
- TerminationTime dimension: The termination time for each context instance. Specifically, this dimension is a collection of the creation time attributes from each event that terminated a monitoring context instance. The TerminationTime dimension includes the events that Business Monitor might generate to terminate the monitoring context instance.
These measures and dimensions are not available when the monitor model is opened in the editor, but will be available for dimensional analysis in Business Monitor.