Visual system for visualizing, navigating, and editing attribute lattices within OLAP databases

Various technologies and techniques are disclosed for creating and managing a visual representation of OLAP attributes and relationships for a dimension. A visual representation is generated that contains an arrangement of shapes with connections between shapes. One or more sub-elements are contained within at least some of the shapes. Connections between the shapes represent relationships between attributes in an OLAP dimension. The containment of a respective sub-element within a respective shape represents a relationship between an attribute being represented by the respective sub-element and an attribute being represented by the respective shape. Shapes representing OLAP attributes and relationships can be programmatically grouped and ungrouped. When an attribute does not have any outgoing relationships, when an attribute only has one incoming relationship, and when the attribute is not a level in a user-defined hierarchy, a grouping process is performed to put the attribute in an expandable shape belonging to another attribute.