Building Database Cubes

Whilst the traditional management information report is no doubt a very powerful tool for understanding information it does remain rather two-dimensional, like a spreadsheet. Reporting cubes bring dimensions to your data and allows you to view or pivot information so that you can see it from different sides. An OLAP cube presents information using dimensions, which means that you can drill down into the information and take apart the variables that make up a report. For example you could be reading statistics about an entire region, but would like to break them down area by area. Drilling down into reports and changing views requires large amounts of recalculation to take place, but using well-designed cubes means that this takes place efficiently and accurately. This enables fast analysis to take place.