Decision Support

Browse Cubes

• What is a Cube?
• Using a Cube
• Getting Access to Cubes
• List of Available Cubes
• Connect to and use UW Cubes

What is a Cube?

A cube is a data analysis tool that allows quick and easily manipulation of data. One can use a cube to quickly and easily answer business questions, such as "How much money was spent, by fiscal year, by organization, by budget, by expense object?"

Why is it called a cube and how does a cube answer this question?

• Let's use the example question above - How much money was spent BY fiscal year, BY organization, BY budget, and BY expense object?. Each of those BY clauses is considered a dimension.
• Because a cube elicits the notion of 3-dimensionality, the word cube was adopted to represent data organized to facilitate exploration by any number of dimensions.
• A data cube has one other major component, called a ‘fact’ or a ‘measure’ (these terms are used interchangeably). The "How much" portion of the question is what's being measured. Cubes can also contain counts, percentages - anything on which one can do math.
• So putting it all together, a cube is a way of storing data that lets users quickly get answers to 'how much' or 'how many' questions, sliced by the dimensions of the user's choice.

Much more information on facts, measures, and dimensions, and how to slice and dice the data, is available in the UW Financial Activity Cube - Getting Started Guide (PDF).

Using Cubes

No special software is needed to work with cube data. If you have Microsoft Excel (or other software such as Tableau), you're set. A technical detail for those interested: UW’s central Business Intelligence environment uses Microsoft Analysis Services to build and manage cubes. 

Getting Access To Cubes

If you already have access to run reports and query data, you do not need to request new access to use cubes – you're already covered.  If you need to request access, you can do so at the Request Access page.

List of Available Cubes

Table 1. Currently available cubes.
*The Financial Activity cubes reflect transactions from the EDW ODS BudgetActivityDetail dataset.

Connect to and Use the Cubes

Financial Activity Cubes

• See the Connection Guide to Financial Activity Cubes -- via Excel (PDF). 

Research Administration Cube

The following videos show how to connect to the cube and get started using it.

Length	Title	Description
5:57	1. Prepare Excel to connect to an EDW cube	Learn why you access EDW using your UW NetID credentials Create file to automate opening Excel Run the automated file to open Excel with your UW NetID
1:30	2. Connect Excel to the Research Administration Data Cube	Create a data source connection  Connect to the cube  Prepare pivot table environment
7:24	3. Explore Research Administration data using Excel pivot tables and the Research Cube	Slice and dice Research Awards data by organization, time, sponsor, and more  Create a chart that changes on the fly as you slice and dice