SUMMARY-DETAIL CUBE ARCHITECTURE USING HORIZONTAL PARTITIONING OF DIMENSIONS

A database architecture and method for processing data in a multidimensional database, including performing Web usage analysis. A summary cube contains the members of an upper level of a dimension and a detail cube contains a subset of the members of a lower level of the dimension partitioned therefrom based on a selected member of the upper level of the dimension. The detail cube also includes one or more sub-cubes containing aggregations of the first subset of the lower level members. An XML template implements a workflow to automatically create a second detail cube partitioned from the dimension based on another selected member of the upper level. Using XML metadata, the invention implements zoom in/zoom out events to navigate between information in the summary cube and information in the detail cubes.