OnLine Analytical Processing (OLAP)
Basically, any business process that requires us to analyze( roll up,drill down etc.)transactional data across a variety of categories is an excellent application of OLAP technology.
- Akey tenet of OLAP is that users should see consistent response times for each view, or slice, of the data they request. Because data is collected at the detail level only, the information summary usually computed in advance. These precomputed values,or aggregations, are the basis of the OLAP performance gains.
- OLAP services includes a middle_tier server that allows users to perform sophisticated analysis on large volumes of data with exceptional performance.
- Another feature of OLAP services is PivotTable service , which allows users to conduct analyses while disconnected from the corporate network.
- OLAP services organizes data from a data warehouse into multidimensional cubes with pre calculated summary information to provide a answers to complex analytical queries.
- OLAp services can access source data in any supported OLE DB data provider, which including not only SQL server but also a large number of desktop and server databases including Microsoft Access,MicroSoft FoxPro,Oracle,Sybase and Informix....
