Board’s database engine is designed to ensure maximum efficiency in managing very large volumes of data and to provide top-level performance. The implementation of exclusive multidimensional management techniques completely avoids the database explosion problem typically associated with multidimensional databases (also referred to as M-OLAP).
Board’s databases are multidimensional and are therefore optimal for online analytical processing (OLAP). Conceptually, a multidimensional database uses the idea of a data cube where the cube cells contain values and the dimensions represent the different possible perspectives on data. For example, a "sales" cube, would contain sales values in its cells and could be viewed by various dimensions such as product (i.e. the sales figure per product), geography (i.e. sales figure by city or region), time and so on.
The information, such as turnover, assets and liabilities, expenses and revenues, etc., is stored in multidimensional objects called InfoCubes that are structured by Entities (such as Month, Customer, and Product). Some Entities can be linked through relationships to establish hierarchical structures (e.g. Customer-->Country-->State).
A Board database is made up of
Entities: these are information sets, generally text and codes like the set of Customers, Products, and Cities. Entities (and hierarchies) are the InfoCubes dimensions.
Hierarchies: when two or more entities have an many-to-one relationship, then a hierarchy can be defined. For example, the entities Customer, City and State can be organized into the hierarchy Custome-->City-->State since there is an many to-one relationship existing between Customer and City and between City and State.
InfoCubes: the data (often numerical but not strictly) that can be analyzed and viewed by its different dimensions and hierarchy levels.
Entities, Hierarchies and InfoCubes form the multidimensional data model of the company or more generally the system modelled. We will use term dimension to refer to an independent entity or an entire hierarchy, used as an axis for an InfoCube. For example, the entity Currency can be a dimension for InfoCubes such as Orders value and Invoiced value. The three entities Customer, City and State, being hierarchically related form a unique dimension, referred to as the Customer dimension – the dimension is named after the entity at the base of the hierarchy or otherwise said the most detailed level of the hierarchy.