Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)

Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) databases facilitate business-intelligence

queries. OLAP is a database technology that has been optimized for querying and
reporting, instead of processing transactions. The source data for OLAP is Online
Transactional Processing (OLTP) databases that are commonly stored in data
warehouses. OLAP data is derived from this historical data, and aggregated into
structures that permit sophisticated analysis. OLAP data is also organized
hierarchically and stored in cubes instead of tables. It is a sophisticated technology
that uses multidimensional structures to provide rapid access to data for analysis.
This organization makes it easy for a PivotTable report or PivotChart report to
display high-level summaries, such as sales totals across an entire country or
region, and also display the details for sites where sales are particularly strong or
weak.
OLAP databases are designed to speed up the retrieval of data. Because the OLAP
server, rather than Microsoft Office Excel, computes the summarized values, less
data needs to be sent to Excel when you create or change a report. This approach
enables you to work with much larger amounts of source data than you could if the
data were organized in a traditional database, where Excel retrieves all of the
individual records and then calculates the summarized values.
OLAP databases contain two basic types of data: measures, which are numeric data,
the quantities and averages that you use to make informed business decisions, and
dimensions, which are the categories that you use to organize these measures.
OLAP databases help organize data by many levels of detail, using the same
categories that you are familiar with to analyze the data
The following sections describe each component in more detail:
Cube : A data structure that aggregates the measures by the levels and hierarchies
of each of the dimensions that you want to analyze. Cubes combine several
dimensions, such as time, geography, and product lines, with summarized data,
such as sales or inventory figures. Cubes are not "cubes" in the strictly
mathematical sense because they do not necessarily have equal sides. However,
they are an apt metaphor for a complex concept.
Measure: A set of values in a cube that are based on a column in the cube's fact
table and that are usually numeric values. Measures are the central values in the
cube that are preprocessed, aggregated, and analyzed. Common examples include
sales, profits, revenues, and costs.
Member: An item in a hierarchy representing one or more occurrences of data. A
member can be either unique or nonunique. For example, 2007 and 2008 represent
unique members in the year level of a time dimension, whereas January represents
nonunique members in the month level because there can be more than one

January in the time dimension if it contains data for more than one year.
Calculated member : A member of a dimension whose value is calculated at run
time by using an expression. Calculated member values may be derived from other
members' values. For example, a calculated member, Profit, can be determined by
subtracting the value of the member, Costs, from the value of the member, Sales.
Dimension : A set of one or more organized hierarchies of levels in a cube that a
user understands and uses as the base for data analysis. For example, a geography
dimension might include levels for Country/Region, State/Province, and City. Or, a
time dimension might include a hierarchy with levels for year, quarter, month, and
day. In a PivotTable report or PivotChart report, each hierarchy becomes a set of
fields that you can expand and collapse to reveal lower or higher levels.
Hierarchy: A logical tree structure that organizes the members of a dimension such
that each member has one parent member and zero or more child members. A child
is a member in the next lower level in a hierarchy that is directly related to the
current member. For example, in a Time hierarchy containing the levels Quarter,
Month, and Day, January is a child of Qtr1. A parent is a member in the next higher
level in a hierarchy that is directly related to the current member. The parent value
is usually a consolidation of the values of all of its children. For example, in a Time
hierarchy that contains the levels Quarter, Month, and Day, Qtr1 is the parent of
January.
Level : Within a hierarchy, data can be organized into lower and higher levels of
detail, such as Year, Quarter, Month, and Day levels in a Time hierarchy.
OLAP features in Excel
Retrieving OLAP data : You can connect to OLAP data sources just as you do to
other external data sources. You can work with databases that are created with
Microsoft SQL Server OLAP Services version 7.0, Microsoft SQL Server Analysis
Services version 2000, and Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services version 2005, the
Microsoft OLAP server products. Excel can also work with third-party OLAP products
that are compatible with OLE-DB for OLAP.
You can display OLAP data only as a PivotTable report or PivotChart report or in a
worksheet function converted from a PivotTable report, but not as an external data
range. You can save OLAP PivotTable reports and PivotChart reports in report
templates, and you can create Office Data Connection (ODC) files (.odc) to connect
to OLAP databases for OLAP queries. When you open an ODC file, Excel displays a
blank PivotTable report, which is ready for you to lay out.
Creating cube files for offline use : You can create an offline cube file (.cub) with
a subset of the data from an OLAP server database. Use offline cube files to work
with OLAP data when you are not connected to your network. A cube enables you to

work with larger amounts of data in a PivotTable report or PivotChart report than
you could otherwise, and speeds retrieval of the data. You can create cube files only
if you use an OLAP provider, such as Microsoft SQL Analysis Services Server version
2005, which supports this feature.
Server Actions: A server action is an optional but useful feature that an OLAP cube
administrator can define on a server that uses a cube member or measure as a
parameter into a query to obtain details in the cube, or to start another application,
such as a browser. Excel supports URL, Report, Rowset, Drill Through, and Expand to
Detail server actions, but it does not support Proprietary, Statement, and Dataset.
For more information, see Perform an OLAP server action in a PivotTable report .
KPIs: A KPI is a special calculated measure that is defined on the server that allows
you to track "key performance indicators" including status (Does the current value
meet a specific number?) and trend (what is the value over time?). When these are
displayed, the Server can send related icons that are similar to the new Excel icon
set to indicate above or below status levels (such as a Stop light icon) or whether a
value is trending up or down (such as a directional arrow icon).
Server Formatting:Cube administrators can create measures and calculated
members with color formatting, font formatting, and conditional formatting rules,
that may be designated as a corporate standard business rule. For example, a
server format for profit might be a number format of currency, a cell color of green
if the value is greater than or equal to 30,000 and red if the value is less than
30,000, and a font style of bold if the value is less than 30,000 and regular if greater
than or equal to 30,000. For more information, see Design the layout and format of
a PivotTable report.
Office display language: A cube administrator can define translations for data
and errors on the server for users who need to see PivotTable information in another
language. This feature is defined as a file connection property and the user's
computer country/regional setting must correspond to the display language.