Abstract: A computer based method and system is described for transforming a portion of a multidimensional database to a form compatible with a relational database management system, where the portion of the multidimensional database has one or more nonbalanced (unbalanced, ragged, etc.) dimension hierarchies. The method comprises receiving a dimension identifier that identifies a portion of a multidimensional database, traversing the branches of the tree structured hierarchy and calculating the depth of each leaf-level dimension member to determine the maximum depth in the dimension, exporting rows from the received portion of the multidimensional database into a data transfer file comprising a plurality of rows, and inserting an element into each position in the exported rows, wherein at least one element is repeated to fill unpopulated positions. In an alternate embodiment, a sequence of database insertion instructions is created in place of the data transfer file.