Hi,
You use partitioning to split the total dataset for an info provider into several, smaller independent units to improve performance. Its always advisable to first create partition and tehn compress the request in info cube because the e-fact table would not have any data if none of requests are compressed and creation of partition is quicker. When compressed data moved from F-table to E-table. For DBMS supporting range partitioning, the E fact table is optimized for reporting with respect to database partitioning and the F fact table is optimized for data load and deletion.
Hope it is clear.
Srikanth.