Nature of OLAP Analysis / Reporting

Nature of OLAP Analysis

• Aggregation Comparison
• Budget vs. Expenses
• Ranking
• Access to detailed and aggregate data
• Complex criteria specification
• Visualization

Reporting

Strengths of OLAP / Typical OLAP Query

Strengths of OLAP

• It is a powerful visualization paradigm.
• It provides fast, interactive response times.
• It is good for analyzing time series.
• It can be useful to find some clusters and outliners.

Typical OLAP Query

• Write a multi-table join to compare Budget for each Org YTD this year vs. last year.
• Repeat the above process to find the top 5 Donors to Funds
• Repeat the above process to find the Funds of a Org to new vs. existing Donor.

Reporting

• Business intelligence tools: These are software applications that simplify the process of development and production of business reports based on data warehouse data.

• Executive information systems (known more widely as Dashboard (business):
These are software applications that are used to display complex business metrics and information in a graphical way to allow rapid understanding.

• OLAP Tools: OLAP tools form data into logical multi-dimensional structures and allow users to select which dimensions to view data by.

• Data Mining: Data mining tools are software that allow users to perform detailed mathematical and statistical calculations on detailed data warehouse data to detect trends, identify patterns and analyze data.