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OLAP Analysis

OLAP delivers the simplest form of analysis, allowing anyone to slice and dice interrelated subsets of data or "cubes" with the click of a mouse. Users can analyze data using standard OLAP features such as page-by, pivot, sort, filter and drill up/down to flip through a series of report views. OLAP Analysis offers users primary access to their data warehouses in lieu of more advanced analysis functionality required by power users and analysts.

Most OLAP vendors provide multi-dimensional OLAP (MOLAP) solutions to perform this type of analysis, but limited cube capacity has burdened many IT administrators with deploying and managing hundreds of overlapping cube databases to keep pace with growing organizational demands. To get the most out of BI applications, however, OLAP analysis needs to extend beyond the standard MOLAP cube and provide full speed-of-thought interactivity against the entire data warehouse. MicroStrategy delivers OLAP Analysis with Intelligent Cubes™ -- a new analysis environment that lets business users easily and safely explore beyond the boundaries of pre-defined cubes to reach the full depth and breadth of their data warehouses -- without relying on IT to create and maintain the cube data. With Intelligent Cubes, MicroStrategy's platform architecture seamlessly combines the speed and interactivity of MOLAP analysis with the analytical power and depth of relational OLAP (ROLAP) for a complete range of OLAP analytical functionality.

Download   Learn more about MicroStrategy Intelligent Cubes in The 5 Styles of Business Intelligence book   Implementation MicroStrategy OLAP Services gives both MicroStrategy Web and MicroStrategy Desktop users access to Intelligent Cubes, letting them slice and dice data without having to re-execute SQL against the data warehouse. Intelligent Cubes facilitate ad hoc query and analysis, allowing users to add and hide objects, create derived metrics, subtotal rows, and filter data Intelligent Cubes hold data on the MicroStrategy Intelligence Server. Intelligent Cube definitions are saved as reports in the metadata. Intelligence Server utilizes its Analytical and multi-pass SQL generation engines to perform ROLAP operations against the data warehouse.

MicroStrategy Platform Features that Support OLAP Analysis:

"Speed-of-Thought" Analysis and Real-time Report Manipulation

MicroStrategy technology lets users perform "speed-of-thought" report analysis and manipulate reports on-the-fly. Multi-dimensional data caches are populated instantly and remain available to all authorized users as long as the data is valid. IT managers no longer have to manage multiple cube farms.

Secure Sharing of Intelligent Cube Data

MicroStrategy's centralized metadata and server architecture makes sharing Intelligent Cube data easy and secure. Users can create and save personalized views of the same Intelligent Cube by adding, editing and removing business attributes and metrics.

Automatic Cube Creation, Population and Data Synchronization

MicroStrategy delivers cube analysis by automatically creating and populating Intelligent Cubes in the centralized metadata for user across the enterprise. Automatic data synchronization ensures that Intelligent Cube data is always up-to-date -- without IT administrator maintenance.

Effortless Drilling from Summary Data to Transaction-level Details

MicroStrategy's Powerful Drill Anywhere functionality lets business users reach the full depth and breadth of their data warehouses to move from OLAP Analysis to Advanced Analysis.
» View Drill Anywhere Functionality