OLAP The Key Performance Indicator

OLAP uses a fast, consistent and interactive method in analyzing any volume of raw data and providing the desired reporting with different view points and dimensions. It provides a vast range of information to the business managers, executives, analysts and training and development managers of an organization in a presentable format in quick time which enables them in making vital business decisions in time.

OLAP system is implemented on multi-user client server architecture. It uses the details from the huge database keeping the original data intact. The organization information is presented in a comparative viewing format using what-if analysis in various scenarios. This means the report is provided in a multi dimensional way, which helps the decision makers analysis the latest trend and take present and future action and the corrective measures if needed.

OLAP system uses the specialized tools for indexing and the algorithms helping in processing lots of data without any impact on the database performance. There are two major types of OLAP systems and both are different in terms of functionality. They are Multi dimensional OLAP (MOLAP) and the relational OLAP (ROLAP). When we compare the two types we find that MOLAP is much faster than ROLAP because it uses the data from the relational database and creates its own Multidimensional database which is easy to access and the time taken in accessing the data from a multi dimensional database is very less.

ROLAP accesses the data directly from the relational database and is a bit slower in processing the data. ROLAP is able to process huge business analysis queries with support to many dimensions whereas MOLAP functions well when there are 10 or less than 10 dimensions. ROLAP supports huge sized data for its analysis but MOLAP is best suited for data which is less than 5 GB of size. ROLAP performs adequately in dynamic consolidation while MOLAP supports only the batch consolidations.

All in all, OLAP, used in any form, is very helpful in accessing and analyzing huge data in a very quick time and is considered as a very important tool used in any business.