5 Multidimensional Databases
The multidimensional database is another way to provide data for OLAP operations. Taking the place of tables in relational databases, multidimensional databases organize data into cubes that contain measures and dimensions. This technology is often referred as MOLAP. The primary benefit of using MOLAP is enhanced performance because of pre-aggregation.
The closest to an industry standard query language is MDX via XMLA. Style Studio uses these technologies to access meta-data from MOLAP databases and present it uniformly. Because the meta-data from a MOLAP database contains all of the information needed for the Style Studio engine, models for multidimensional databases are automatically created.
Recommendation: Within a given level of a dimension, do not create multiple entries with the same name. This creates an ambiguity for Viewsheet selections.
Multidimensional databases are most commonly provided by a part of a relational database. Both the Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services and Oracle OLAP server are OLAP add-ons. ESSbase is a specialized multidimensional database that is also marketed as an IBM OLAP server as an add-on to the DB2 database server. Some independent OLAP databases exist, such as Mondrian.
See Also
Appendix Appendix B:, OLAP Server Setup, for details about specific databases.
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