What is "olap"

OLAP

OLAP,or Online Analytical Processing is the ability to manipulate and analyze a large volume of data from multiple perspectives.

OLAP applications are used by managers at any level of the organization to allow them comparative analyses that facilitate their daily decision-making.

The OLAP architecture has tools that are classified into five types: ROLAP, MOLAP, HOLAP, DOLAP and WOLAP (in addition to XOLAP).

Benefits

"Online Analytical Processing", or OLAP provides organizations a method of accessing, viewing, and analyzing corporate data with high flexibility and performance. In today’s globalized world, companies are facing greater competition and expanding their operations to new markets. Therefore, the speed with which executives obtain information and make decisions determines the competitiveness of a company and its long-term success. OLAP presents information to users via a natural and intuitive data model. Through a simple browsing and research style, end-users can quickly analyze numerous scenarios, generate "ad-hoc" reports, and uncover relevant trends and facts regardless of the size, complexity, and source of corporate data. In fact, putting information in corporate databases has always been easier than removing it. The larger and complex the information stored, the more difficult it is to remove it. OLAP technology ends these difficulties by bringing the information closer to the user who needs it. Therefore, OLAP is often used to integrate and provide managerial information contained in operational databases, ERP and CRM systems, accounting systems, and data warehouses. These features have made it an essential technology in many types of decision support applications and systems for executives.

Data Model

In a OLAP data model, information is conceptually organized into cubes that store quantitative or measured values. The measurements are identified by two or more descriptive categories called dimensions that form the structure of a cube. A dimension can be any business vision that makes sense for your analysis, such as product, department or time. This multidimensional data model simplifies for users the process of formulating complex searches or "queries", creating reports, performing comparative analyses, and visualizing subsets (Slice) of greatest interest. For example, a cube containing sales information may consist of time, region, product, customer, scenario (budgeted or real) and measures. Typical measures would be selling value, units sold, costs, margin, etc.

Within each dimension of a OLAP model, data can be organized in a hierarchy that defines different levels of detail. For example, within the time dimension, you may have a hierarchy representing levels years, months, and days. In the same way, the region dimension may have the country, region, state and city levels. Thus, a user viewing data in a OLAP model will navigate up (Drill up) or down (Drill down) between levels to view information with higher or lower level of detail without the slightest difficulty.

Applications

The application of OLAP is quite diversified and its use is found in several areas of a company. Some types of application where technology is employed are:

Finanças - L&P Analysis, L&P Reports, Budget, Balance Sheet Analysis, Cash Flow, Receivables.

Vendas - Sales Analysis (by region, product, seller, etc.), Forecasting, Customer Profitability/Contract, Distribution Channel Analysis.

Marketing - Price/Volume Analysis, Product Profitability, Market Analysis.

Recursos Humanos - Benefit Analysis, Wage Projection, "Headcount Analysis".

Manufatura - Stock Management, Supply Chain, Demand Planning, Raw Material Cost Analysis.