OLAP An answer to all your Queries

The increasing data requirement by the management of business houses have made them over dependent on information technology and their top decisions which are made for the business growth, are based on the various reports and analysis provided by their IT system. OLAP, which stands for Online Analytical Processing, is a system which is very useful in providing such information with an ease to the decision makers and they are taking the help from OLAP reports to full extent in order to achieve their goals.

OLAP tool proves to be very effective in increasing business productivity of the employees as this is used in obtaining complex reports by the managers, executives, trainers and Business analysts as they all have a same goal, business expansion and the growth of the company they are working for. The huge data of any corporate house is stored in database servers of the computer system. OLAP retrieves and stores the same data in a structural format which is later used in processing and generating various simple as well as complex reports, which the user can see from different perspectives and analyze it to enable the company take certain decisions about present and future course of action in optimizing business.

The data, which is stored in a relational database, is retrieved by OLAP system in a multi dimensional way and stored in a multi dimensional database, which is optimized database useful in data warehousing and reporting with the help of OLAP queries and tools. The original data remains intact in the relational database.

OLAP system can be classified in six categories which are Multi-Dimensional (MOLAP), Relational (ROLAP), Hybrid (HOLAP), Desktop (DOLAP), Web Based (WOLAP) and Real Time (RTOLAP). The top three types of OLAP are the most widely used types of OLAP system.

The multidimensional OLAP accesses its data from multidimensional databases which processes data rather quickly and uses data cubes representing the dimensions of data where a single report can be analyzed with different angles providing dynamic analysis. Data cubes are created by the data tables. The Relational OLAP gets its data from relational databases directly in producing the reports. A Hybrid OLAP uses the features of both MOLAP and ROLAP. Use of MOLAP is very common due to its quick ability in displaying the reports and query results in a dynamic manner which is more informative to its users.