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Management Support Systems

Notes

Task Compare and contrast Multidimensional OLAP and Relational OLAP.

7.2.4 Features of OLAP

There are the following key features of OLAP:

Multi-dimensional views of data
Support for complex calculations
Time intelligence

Multi-dimensional Views of Data

A multi-dimensional view of data provides the basis for analytical processing through flexible
access to corporate data. It enables users to analyze data across any dimension at any level of
aggregation with equal functionality and ease.

Support for Complex Calculations

OLAP software must provide a range of powerful computational methods such as that required
by sales forecasting such as moving averages and percentage growth.

Time Intelligence

Time intelligence is used to judge the performance of almost any analytical application over
time.
For example, this month versus last month or this month versus the same month last year or a
user may require to view, the sales of the month of Mayor the sales for the first five months of
2007.

Concepts such as year-to-date and period-over-period comparisons should be easily defined in
an OLAP system.

7.2.5 OLAP Cubes Support Business Intelligence

OLAP helps to visualize data as cube structures.

Figure 7.3: Cube Structure

Source: http://infogoal.com/datawarehousing/olap.htm

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