What is Strategy PRIME?
Strategy PRIME is a new feature added in Strategy 10 which represents the evolution of the OLAP Intelligent Cubes. Its name stands for Strategy Parallel Relational In-Memory Engine.
Strategy PRIME uses Strategy Web Data Import Tool to build In-Memory Cubes (PRIME Cubes from now on) that will serve as the data sources to be handled by the PRIME Engine in order to fulfill the data requests. The PRIME Engine is in charge to optimize the data requests based on the data available in the PRIME Cubes, and will help to minimize the amount of processing, improve response time and ensure data correctness.
Regular OLAP Intelligent Cubes allowed the storage of certain subsets of data to remain in memory for faster access and improved performance. Strategy PRIME goes far beyond by adding a complete extra layer between the data store and the data analytics layers, allowing to process orders of much higher magnitude and complexity than the ones currently available for OLAP Cubes.
For example, OLAP Cubes allow to have one fact table and several lookup tables that will create a subset of data that will be used for reporting. Strategy PRIME allows to have several fact tables and lookup tables in a similar was as a mini schema would allow to do the reporting. This gives a lot more flexibility to play and report with the information stored in the PRIME Cubes.
While the current OLAP Services is limited to 2 billion rows, Strategy PRIME allows to slice PRIME Cubes data in a customized number of partitions, each one with up to 2 billion rows. This multiplies the data storage capacity as needed depending on the number of partitions defined. More than that, each partition can be handled in parallel by it's own CPU which greatly improves performance depending on the available machine resources.
It is important to note that Strategy PRIME is not a database, and will not preclude the need for a database or data warehouse platform; rather, PRIME is an in-memory engine that co-exists with the already supported databases.
For additional information:
KB221859: PRIME partitioning guidelines for MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise Platform
