A virtual cube differs from a standard cube in Cognos TM1. It is a TM1 cube which is sometimes termed as a soft cube where no data is loaded to or resides in, but only references data points in other cubes.
Being a fully rules-calculated cube, virtual cubes have no data stored in them. They just have rules pulling data from other cubes and possibly performing additional calculations on that data.
To a TM1 user, a virtual cube may have the exact same appearance of a standard or hard cube. We will discuss the creation and use of a virtual cube in this chapter.
To create a virtual cube, you would first design and create a cube using the methods already discussed for creating a standard cube, but no data would actually be loaded into the cube.
Standard TM1 cubes may have significant amounts of data pulled from or referenced from other cubes, but virtual cubes will have 100 percent of their data pulled from other cubes.
The steps to create a simple virtual cube...