OLAP Reporting: Web-based Analysis of OLAP Cubes

by LogiXML BIz Comm Editorial Staff
August 3, 2006

As online analytical processing (OLAP) technology becomes more popular, developers are increasingly being asked to create custom reporting solutions for OLAP data sources. OLAP-based reporting demands flexibility and a high level of interactivity.

What Is OLAP Reporting?

A growing number of companies are using OLAP to optimize their complex data for analysis, keeping pre-calculated data dimensions in OLAP ‘cubes’ to get faster answers to business questions. OLAP is specifically designed for analyzing multidimensional data sets, where patterns and relationships between the data are not obvious.

Databases configured for OLAP use this concept of a 'cube’ (that is, pre-calculated data dimensions), and queries are then run against the cubes. In this multi-dimensional format, intersections of relevant data become more apparent, so that data is easier to group and summarize, and in effect, analyze. For example, OLAP allows an analyst to answer questions like "How many computers have been sold in Canada this year?", "Of those sold in Canada, how many were sold to people over 50?", “Further, how many were sold in Ottawa to people over 50?”, and so on.

In line with LogiXML’s approach for giving users various options to meet any of their reporting needs, LogiXML offers Web-based OLAP Reporting for those organizations who have implemented the technology and have set up OLAP cubes for complex analysis. LogiXML’s OLAP Reporting products bring the power of OLAP analysis to any users across your organization, providing a convenient Web-based cube viewer. This tool helps your users quickly make sense of the corporate data in those OLAP cubes.

LogiXML’s OLAP Reporting is an open, zero footprint, XML-based Web application that connects over the network to data cubes defined with Microsoft Analysis Services.

Next ... Benefits of OLAP Reporting