Member properties are characteristics, set by you, that determine the behavior of the data stored in your database. For example, it is quite natural to want to know the value of sales for a quarter. If you set the consolidation property of each month member to (+) and calculate the database, the calendar quarter value will be the sum of the three child members under it which are the individual months. There is no need to load data at the calendar quarter's level since you can calculate it from the individual month's level.
There are also storage properties that Essbase uses to determine how the data is stored in the database. The following is a detailed explanation of member properties and their uses.
