Understanding incremental update of cubes

When is a cube incrementally updated?

Incremental update of the fact table(s) on a cube takes place under the following circumstances

1. The fact table is partitioned on the Data Warehouse
2. The cube has the Incremental Update parameter activated
3. The destination SQL Server is an Edition that supports multiple partitions (Enterprise Edition)

When processing the cube:

Loop over cube partitions. Based on the DW_PartionKey, search the physical partitions for a partition that matches the cube partition.

If no matching partition is found, process the cube partition to be sure it has been processed.

If a matching partition is found, compare the max value of the DW_TimeStamp for the physical partition with the last updated timestamp for the cube partition. If the DW_TimeStamp value is greater than the last processed timestamp for the cube partition, process the cube partition.