Lecture 15

Steps in OLAP creation process

What is business intelligence?

A business analyst often wants to get a big picture of the

business, to see broader trends based on aggregated data,
and to see these trends broken down by any number of
variables. Business intelligence is the process of extracting
data from an OLAP database and then analyzing that data for
information that you can use to make informed business
decisions and take action. For example, OLAP and business
intelligence help answer the following types of questions
about business data:

▪ How do the total sales of all products for 2007 compare with
the total sales from 2006?
▪ How does our profitability to date compare with the same
time period during the past five years?
▪ How much money did customers over the age of 35 spend
last year, and how has that behavior changed over time?
▪ How many products were sold in two specific
country/regions this month as opposed to the same month
last year?
▪ For each customer age group, what is the breakdown of
profitability (both margin percentage and total) by product
category?
▪ Find top and bottom salespeople, distributors, vendors,
clients, partners, or customers.What is Online Analytical
Processing (OLAP)?
Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) databases facilitate
business-intelligence queries. OLAP is a database technology
that has been optimized for querying and reporting, instead
of processing transactions. The source data for OLAP is
Online Transactional Processing (OLTP) databases that are
commonly stored in data warehouses. OLAP data is derived
from this historical data, and aggregated into structures that
permit sophisticated analysis. OLAP data is also organized
hierarchically and stored in cubes instead of tables. It is a
sophisticated technology that uses multidimensional
structures to provide rapid access to data for analysis. This
organization makes it easy for a PivotTable report or
PivotChart report to display high-level summaries, such as
sales totals across an entire country or region, and also
display the details for sites where sales are particularly strong
or weak.

OLAP databases are designed to speed up the retrieval of

data. Because the OLAP server, rather than Microsoft Office
Excel, computes the summarized values, less data needs to
be sent to Excel when you create or change a report. This
approach enables you to work with much larger amounts of
source data than you could if the data were organized in a
traditional database, where Excel retrieves all of the
individual records and then calculates the summarized
values.

OLAP databases contain two basic types of data: measures,

which are numeric data, the quantities and averages that you
use to make informed business decisions, and dimensions,
which are the categories that you use to organize these
measures. OLAP databases help organize data by many levels
of detail, using the same categories that you are familiar with
to analyze the data.

The following sections describe each component in more

detail:
Cube A data structure that aggregates the measures by the
levels and hierarchies of each of the dimensions that you
want to analyze. Cubes combine several dimensions, such as
time, geography, and product lines, with summarized data,
such as sales or inventory figures. Cubes are not "cubes" in
the strictly mathematical sense because they do not
necessarily have equal sides. However, they are an apt
metaphor for a complex concept.

Measure A set of values in a cube that are based on a

column in the cube's fact table and that are usually numeric
values. Measures are the central values in the cube that are
preprocessed, aggregated, and analyzed. Common examples
include sales, profits, revenues, and costs.

Member An item in a hierarchy representing one or more

occurrences of data. A member can be either unique or
nonunique. For example, 2007 and 2008 represent unique
members in the year level of a time dimension, whereas
January represents nonunique members in the month level
because there can be more than one January in the time
dimension if it contains data for more than one year.

Calculated member A member of a dimension whose value

is calculated at run time by using an expression. Calculated
member values may be derived from other members' values.
For example, a calculated member, Profit, can be determined
by subtracting the value of the member, Costs, from the
value of the member, Sales.

Dimension A set of one or more organized hierarchies of

levels in a cube that a user understands and uses as the base
for data analysis. For example, a geography dimension might
include levels for Country/Region, State/Province, and City.
Or, a time dimension might include a hierarchy with levels for
year, quarter, month, and day. In a PivotTable report or
PivotChart report, each hierarchy becomes a set of fields that
you can expand and collapse to reveal lower or higher levels.

Hierarchy A logical tree structure that organizes the

members of a dimension such that each member has one
parent member and zero or more child members. A child is a
member in the next lower level in a hierarchy that is directly
related to the current member. For example, in a Time
hierarchy containing the levels Quarter, Month, and Day,
January is a child of Qtr1. A parent is a member in the next
higher level in a hierarchy that is directly related to the
current member. The parent value is usually a consolidation
of the values of all of its children. For example, in a Time
hierarchy that contains the levels Quarter, Month, and Day,
Qtr1 is the parent of January.
Level Within a hierarchy, data can be organized into lower
and higher levels of detail, such as Year, Quarter, Month, and
Day levels in a Time hierarchy.

OLAP features in Excel

Retrieving OLAP data You can connect to OLAP data
sources just as you do to other external data sources. You
can work with databases that are created with Microsoft SQL
Server OLAP Services version 7.0, Microsoft SQL Server
Analysis Services version 2000, and Microsoft SQL Server
Analysis Services version 2005, the Microsoft OLAP server
products. Excel can also work with third-party OLAP products
that are compatible with OLE-DB for OLAP.

You can display OLAP data only as a PivotTable report or

PivotChart report or in a worksheet function converted from
a PivotTable report, but not as an external data range. You
can save OLAP PivotTable reports and PivotChart reports in
report templates, and you can create Office Data Connection
(ODC) files (.odc) to connect to OLAP databases for OLAP
queries. When you open an ODC file, Excel displays a blank
PivotTable report, which is ready for you to lay out.

Creating cube files for offline use You can create an offline
cube file (.cub) with a subset of the data from an OLAP server
database. Use offline cube files to work with OLAP data when
you are not connected to your network. A cube enables you
to work with larger amounts of data in a PivotTable report or
PivotChart report than you could otherwise, and speeds
retrieval of the data. You can create cube files only if you use
an OLAP provider, such as Microsoft SQL Analysis Services
Server version 2005, which supports this feature.

Server Actions A server action is an optional but useful

feature that an OLAP cube administrator can define on a
server that uses a cube member or measure as a parameter
into a query to obtain details in the cube, or to start another
application, such as a browser. Excel supports URL, Report,
Rowset, Drill Through, and Expand to Detail server actions,
but it does not support Proprietary, Statement, and Dataset.

KPIs A KPI is a special calculated measure that is defined

on the server that allows you to track "key performance
indicators" including status (Does the current value meet a
specific number?) and trend (what is the value over time?).
When these are displayed, the Server can send related icons
that are similar to the new Excel icon set to indicate above or
below status levels (such as a Stop light icon) or whether a
value is trending up or down (such as a directional arrow
icon).

Server Formatting Cube administrators can create

measures and calculated members with color formatting,
font formatting, and conditional formatting rules, that may
be designated as a corporate standard business rule. For
example, a server format for profit might be a number
format of currency, a cell color of green if the value is greater
than or equal to 30,000 and red if the value is less than
30,000, and a font style of bold if the value is less than
30,000 and regular if greater than or equal to 30,000. For
more information, see Design the layout and format of a
PivotTable report.
Office display language A cube administrator can define
translations for data and errors on the server for users who
need to see PivotTable information in another language. This
feature is defined as a file connection property and the user's
computer country/regional setting must correspond to the
display language.
 software components that you need to access OLAP data
sources

An OLAP provider To set up OLAP data sources for Excel,

you need one of the following OLAP providers:
▪ Microsoft OLAP provider Excel includes the data source
driver and client software that you need to access databases
created with Microsoft SQL Server OLAP Services version 7.0,
Microsoft SQL Server OLAP Services version 2000 (8.0), and
Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services version 2005 (9.0).
▪ Third-party OLAP providers For other OLAP products, you
need to install additional drivers and client software. To use
the Excel features for working with OLAP data, the third-
party product must conform to the OLE-DB for OLAP
standard and be Microsoft Office compatible. For
information about installing and using a third-party OLAP
provider, consult your system administrator or the vendor for
your OLAP product.

Server databases and cube files The Excel OLAP client

software supports connections to two types of OLAP
databases. If a database on an OLAP server is available on
your network, you can retrieve source data from it directly. If
you have an offline cube file that contains OLAP data or a
cube definition file, you can connect to that file and retrieve
source data from it.

Data sources A data source gives you access to all of the

data in the OLAP database or offline cube file. After you
create an OLAP data source, you can base reports on it, and
return the OLAP data to Excel in the form of a PivotTable
report or PivotChart report, or in a worksheet function
converted from a PivotTable report.

Microsoft Query You can use Query to retrieve data from

an external database such as Microsoft SQL or Microsoft
Access. You do not need to use Query to retrieve data from
an OLAP PivotTable that is connected to a cube file. For more
information, see Use Microsoft Query to retrieve external
data.

Feature differences between OLAP and non-OLAP source

data

If you work with PivotTable reports and PivotChart reports

from both OLAP source data and other types of source data,
you will notice some feature differences.
Data retrieval An OLAP server returns new data to Excel
every time that you change the layout of the report. With
other types of external source data, you query for all the
source data at once, or you can set options to query only
when you display different report filter field items. You also
have several other options for refreshing the report.
In reports based on OLAP source data, the report filter field
settings are unavailable, background query is unavailable,
and the optimize memory setting is not available.
Note: The optimize memory setting is also not available for
OLEDB data sources and for PivotTable reports based on a
cell range.
Field types OLAP source data, dimension fields can be used
only as row (series), column (category), or page fields.
Measure fields can be used only as value fields. For other
types of source data, all fields can be used in any part of a
report.
Access to detail data For OLAP source data, the server
determines what levels of detail are available and calculates
summary values, so the detail records that make up summary
values may not be available. The server may, however,
provide property fields that you can display. Other types of
source data don't have property fields, but you can display
the underlying detail for data field values and for items, and
you can show items with no data.
OLAP report filter fields may not have an All item, and
the Show Report Filter Pages command is unavailable.

Initial sort order For OLAP source data, items first appear
in the order in which the OLAP server returns them. You can
then sort or manually rearrange the items. For other types of
source data, the items in a new report first appear sorted in
ascending order by item name.

Calculations OLAP servers provide summarized values

directly for a report, so you cannot change the summary
functions for value fields. For other types of source data, you
can change the summary function for a value field and use
multiple summary functions for the same value field. You
cannot create calculated fields or calculated items in reports
with OLAP source data.
Subtotals In reports with OLAP source data, you cannot
change the summary function for subtotals. With other types
of source data, you can change subtotal summary functions
and show or hide subtotals for all row and column fields.
For OLAP source data, you can include or exclude hidden
items when you calculate subtotals and grand totals. For
other types of source data, you can include hidden report
filter field items in subtotals, but hidden items in other fields
are excluded by default.