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What’s so special about OLAP technology?

And we’re back to Excel sheets: Here we have our data on a row and column level,

so it’s two-dimensional. This means that the best you can hope for are

understanding two-dimensional relationships in your data. Both rows and columns

must always be populated, even if this means, for example, that the same month,

the same product, or the same customer, etc. is listed several times. As a result, the

sheets quickly become large and cumbersome – especially when multiple people

have to access them and make changes. This is similar to relational databases, in

which a data set (row) is put into relation via attributes (columns) in a two-

dimensional way.

With the multidimensional model described above using the cube, multiple entries

of the same dimensions become redundant. Once created in the database, they

point to the various target coordinates in the form of key figures to which they are

linked. The multidimensional arrangement of the data has many advantages. Let’s

take a look at the most important ones.

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