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Learn more about On-Line Analytical Processing – OLAP

On-Line Analytical Processing – OLAP – is a category of applications and technologies for collecting, managing, processing and presenting multidimensional data for analysis and management purposes.

OLAP uses a multidimensional view of aggregate data to provide quick access to strategic information for further analysis.

OLAP allows fast and efficient analysis of data by turning raw data into information that can be understood by users and manipulated in various ways.

OLAP applications require multidimensional views of data, and usually, calculation-intensive capabilities and time intelligence.

OLAP is computer processing that enables a user to easily and selectively extract and view data from different points of view.

Example: a user can request that data should be analyzed to display a spreadsheet showing all of a company's beach ball products sold in Florida in the month of July, compare revenue figures with those for the same products in September, and then see a comparison of other product sales in Florida in the same time period.

To facilitate this kind of analysis, OLAP data is stored in a multi-dimensional database.
OLAP can be used for data mining or for the discovery of previously undiscerned relationships between data items.

An OLAP database does not need to be as large as a data warehouse, since not all transactional data is needed for trend analysis. Using Open Database Connectivity (ODBC), data can be imported from existing relational databases to create a multidimensional database for OLAP.

OLAP functionality is characterized by dynamic multi-dimensional analysis of consolidated enterprise data supporting end user analytical and navigational activities. The objective of multi-dimensional analysis is for end users to gain insight into the meaning contained in databases.

The multi-dimensional approach to analysis aligns the data content with the analyst's mental model, which helps avoiding confusion and erroneous interpretations. It also eases navigating the database, screening for a particular subset of data, asking for the data in a particular orientation and defining analytical calculations.

Since the data is physically stored in a multi-dimensional structure, the speed of these operations is many times faster and more consistent than is possible in other database structures. This combination of simplicity and speed is one of the key benefits of multi-dimensional analysis.

For further study we recommend the following links. Please inform us if you know of a web page that belong here.
 
 
http://www.dwreview.com/OLAP/Introduction_OLAP.html Introduction
http://www.moulton.com/olap/olap.glossary.html Glossary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_analytical_processing Overview
http://www.olapreport.com/fasmi.htm Info on the OLAP market
http://www.olapcouncil.org/research/whtpaply.htm White paper


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Olap Reporting Tool icon OLAP Reporting Tool extends the built-in OLAP features in Excel and makes them easier to work with, especially for workgroups.

Users can share customized reports without effort. Either display a graph or a table or a combination of both. Choose between all the Excel graph types and also use the multi-graph feature to display multiple graphs side by side, compared on any set of data.
Try it!



       


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