About the Course
Online Analytical Processing, or OLAP, is an approach for business users to answering multi-dimensional analytical queries. OLAP is part of the broader category of Business Intelligence. Typical applications of OLAP include business reporting, for example for sales, marketing, management reporting, budgeting and forecasting, financial reporting and similar areas.
OLAP tools enable business users to analyze multidimensional data interactively from multiple perspectives. OLAP consists of three basic analytical operations: consolidation (roll-up), drill-down, and slicing and dicing.
- Consolidation involves the aggregation of data that can be accumulated and computed in one or more dimensions.
- Drill-down is a technique that allows users to navigate through the details.
- Slicing and dicing is a feature whereby users can take out (slicing) a specific set of data of the OLAP cube and view (dicing) the slices from different viewpoints.