Patent ID: 7809735

Claim:
A method, comprising: by each of a plurality of aggregation processors, accessing a separate partition of facts of a fact table; applying at least two separate aggregation processes to the partition of the facts accessed by that aggregation processor, wherein the at least two separate aggregation processes applied to the partition of the facts accessed by that aggregation processor are the same at least two separate aggregation processes being applied by the each of the other aggregation processors to the partition of facts accessed by that other aggregation processor; and for each of the at least two separate aggregation processes, saving an intermediate result of applying that separate aggregation process by that aggregation processor; for each of the at least two separate aggregation processes, merging the intermediate results, of applying the aggregation processing for that process by the aggregation processors, wherein, for each of the at least two separate aggregation processes, the intermediate result of applying that separate aggregation process includes a distillation of the facts of the partition of facts to which that aggregation process is applied, into an aggregate value that represents an aggregate of the facts of the partition of facts.