Apparatus and method for allowing complex aggregates in analytical views in a distributed database

A system has worker machines connected by a network. Each worker machine stores at least one partition of a distributed database and a partial function module to initialize a database dimension, increment an aggregate of the database dimension in response to a data change and to serialize a last aggregate of the database dimension in response to a refresh operation to form partial results of an analytical view. An analytical view machine connected to the network responds to a query without accessing a partition of the distributed database. The analytical view machine merges partial results from the worker machines to produce a final result to the query.