Patent ID: 7366725

Claim:
A method of managing cells formed from a tuple of members in a multidimensional database, the method comprising: treating at least one dimension in the database as a plurality of hierarchically structured members divided into at least two levels, thereby defining a validation curve as the location of an intersection of said levels; evaluating in what level cells in the database are located; managing cells contained in a lower level by automatically indicating them as one of valid or invalid at data load time; and managing cells contained in an upper level by indicating them as one of valid or invalid in a manner that involves less reading from and/or less writing to the database at data load time than if all the cells in the upper level were indicated as one of valid or invalid at data load time, wherein cells in said upper level are managed according to at least one of the options: a) the cells are permanently indicated as invalid; b) the cells are stored with a timestamp indicating the time that the cell was last updated, wherein a calculated cell is evaluated as being one of valid and invalid by comparing the timestamp of the calculated cell with the timestamp of its source ceils located above the validation curve and by determining the validity of its source cells located below the validation curve; and c) only cells that may be queried are stored in the multidimensional database and the cells are indicated as one of valid and invalid at data load time; allowing for adjustment of the location of the validation curve of at least one dimension.