Identify the two types of storage for Essbase.

Oracle Essbase developers creating planning and budgeting applications have been keenly aware of the advantages and disadvantages of the two different storage types available to them:

* Block storage option (BSO) databases support a wide range of calculations, including forecasts, allocations, and aggregations through procedural calculation scripts. The results of these calculations can be written back to the database, but applications that use BSO storage are limited to about 10 dimensions and member counts in the low hundreds of thousands.

* Aggregate storage option (ASO) databases can support about 20 dimensions and member counts in the millions. ASO databases use multidimensional functions rather than procedural scripts to perform calculations, but the results of queries cannot be stored back in the database, making ASO unsuitable for most financial management applications.