The benefits of using OLAP Services

OLAP Services combines the benefits of both MOLAP and ROLAP analyses.

Generally speaking, MOLAP tools place data in multi-dimensional cubes and perform consolidations in advance, allowing you to run queries fast. ROLAP tools allow you to use complex SQL queries against relational tables to obtain multi-dimensional views of data on the fly.

Each type of analysis has its own advantages and disadvantages. However, OLAP Services provides MOLAP and ROLAP analysis on the same report, which offers many distinct benefits, summarized below:

• Analyze reports at the "speed of thought", and manipulate them in real time

  Using OLAP Services, you can get fast response times for reports that use data directly from in-memory Intelligent Cubes, instead of from the data warehouse. You can create and analyze new reports in real time through interactive OLAP Services manipulations.

• Share Intelligent Cube data securely

  MicroStrategy's centralized metadata and Intelligence Server architecture allows Intelligent Cube data to be shared in a secure fashion.

• Schedule Intelligent Cube execution and maintenance

  To reduce stress on the Intelligence Server, you can schedule when Intelligent Cubes are executed. This allows you to take advantage of Intelligence Server down time to execute Intelligent Cubes without affecting performance for your user community.

  You can also schedule when Intelligent Cubes are re-executed to synchronize their data with changes to the data in your data warehouse.

• Drill from summary data to transaction-level details

  You can drill from predefined reports to conduct advanced analysis and take full advantage of the Intelligent Cube feature. Drilling is allowed within an Intelligent Cube for quick-response MOLAP analysis. Drilling can also be enabled outside of an Intelligent Cube for full ROLAP analysis.

• Use MicroStrategy Developer, Office, or Web

  Using OLAP Services, you can perform the same multidimensional analysis whether you use MicroStrategy Developer, Office, or Web.

• Apply security restrictions on users and objects

  Reporting with OLAP Services and Intelligent Cubes adhere to the same standards of data access security as the rest of your MicroStrategy project.

• Increase user self-service and productivity

  Since accessing Intelligent Cubes for OLAP analysis does not require runtime processing on the data warehouse and can use schedules to reduce IT management, users have increased flexibility to create and modify their own reports to suit their unique work environment.