In accordance with an embodiment, described herein is a system and method for improving performance within a multidimensional database computing environment. A multidimensional database, utilizing a block storage option, performs numerous input/output (I/O) operations when executing calculations. To separate I/O operations from calculations, a background task queue is created to identify data blocks requiring I/O. The background task queue is utilized by background writer threads to execute the I/O operations in parallel with calculations.