OLAP in detail

OLAP is a graphical tool that provides multidimensional views of data. Raw data when analyzed through OLAP can lead to a very easy way in understanding the data. It provides the users with all the information related to the data. Users can identify patters or trends from in the data easily through this tool and it makes the work easy as user no more has to search through piles of raw data.

Its biggest advantage is that it is beneficial for future predictions of an organization’s sales/costs/profit with respect to the current trends and pattern. Also, technical knowledge is not required to work on OLAP tool, only the knowledge of Relational Database is sufficient.

All the OLAP tools basically present the data to the users in the form of Multidimensional Cubes. Any relational tables can be represented in the form of a cube.

For Example, the below tables shows the records of watch sales in different locations- 

This table can be represented in the form of cube where-

Here it’s a 2 Dimensional layout.Each axis of cube is the dimension. Horizontal Dimension holds the product and vertical dimension holds the sales of the product. The above data is arranged as Products by Store but it can also be arranged as Store by products thus-

 Different business questions can be answered by arranging the data differently.