Online OLAP Defined

Online OLAP is short for web-based (online) analytical processing. It is an approach to briskly answer multi-dimensional analytical queries.

Typically, applications with the capacity for OLAP include business reporting capabilities for marketing, sales, management reporting, and other related facets of an organization.

OLAP can be used for data mining to discover correlations between previously thought to be unrelated data sets. OLAP databases are not as large as normal databases since not all data is required for trend analysis.

OLAP products are typically designed with multiple users in mind. OLAP tools enable users to analyze multidimensional data from a variety of different viewpoints. OLAP has been broken down into three techniques: consolidation, drill-down, and slice and dice.

Consolidation is the aggregation phase in which data is gathered and processed in multiple dimensions. Drill-down is a process by which users can navigate the finer details of their data. Slicing and dicing involves segregating data and viewing it from several different perspectives.

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What Makes InetSoft Unique?

InetSoft offers a unique capability in its BI platform for enabling end-users to combine disparate data sources (OLAP servers and operational databases, e.g.) that are not already mapped within a data warehouse schema. While traditional information management philosophy requires IT to be the gatekeeper of a "single truth" of enterprise data definitions, it is misguided to believe that this can ever be fully accomplished.

Moreover, by limiting end-user abilities IT creates obstacles to delivering the fullest benefits of BI and burdens itself with unnecessary change requests, work backlogs, and administration overhead.

InetSoft offers access to any database with a JDBC connector available. The most notable and widely used databases Style Intelligence has the capacity to access are XML, SOAP, Java beans (POJO), Microsoft Excel, flat files, OLAP cubes, SAP, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, salesforce.com, Siebel CRM, Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services, Hyperion ESSbase, Oracle OLAP, and SAP NetWeaver. For all sources please see this list.

Style Intelligence has the unique capability to mash up data from all the above sources as well as local sources.