InetSoft Product Information: Virtual OLAP Models

First, to recap physical views and logical models:

The data model exposes business data in a format which end-users will understand, and offers maximum flexibility for end-user self-service. It does this through two complementary components, the physical view and the logical model. The physical view transforms a generic database schema into a businessfriendly schema, capturing just the tables and join relationships that the business user needs.

The logical model then organizes the information of the physical view into logical entities that correspond to business-world objects, entities and attributes. This makes the data accessible and easy to use.

BI DemoRegister

Virtual OLAP Model Example

The following example will demonstrate how easy it is to set up a virtual OLAP model against a relational database.

Follow the steps below to add a hierarchical level to an existing dimension in the ‘Order Model’.

  1. In a Windows environment, open the Data Modeler by selecting the option on the Windows Start Menu, Start → All Programs → Style Intelligence → Data Modeler.
  2. Expand the ‘Orders’ data source in the tree in the left-hand pane, then expand the ‘Data Model’ and select the ‘Order Model’.
  3. Click the Hierarchy tab at the bottom of the window.
  4. Add the ‘City’ attribute to the ‘Customer’ dimension:
    1. Select the ‘City’ attribute under the ‘Customer’ entity in the ‘Entities’ pane.
    2. Drag and drop the ‘City’ attribute onto the ‘Customer’ dimension in the ‘Dimensions’ pane.
  5. Select the ‘City’ field you just added, and use the ‘up’ arrow button to position this level between ‘State’ and ‘Company’.

Creating a virtual overlay on top of your existing ER database schema is as simple as defining your own dimensions and measures. By simply using the Entities and Attributes that already exist in your data model, you can quickly define the levels to group and aggregate your data with the OLAP overlay.

InetSoft Viewpoint

"Organizations have found our business intelligence software to be very attractive for the strong, but easy to use, self-service dashboard and report design tools," commented Mark Flaherty, Vice President of Marketing at InetSoft. "They are able to satisfy the demands of many individuals with personalizable views of their data and can save hours of effort in gathering their data for weekly operational meetings, for instance. But the more sophisticated enterprises who expand their salesforce implementation with custom objects and fields have been frustrated by other applications that either don’t provide access to this data or require expensive custom setup. Now InetSoft’s application overcomes those barriers and gives even more power to users."

Previous: Creating a Logical Model