DIFFERENTIATING THE ROLE OF ONLINE ANALYTICAL PROCESSING IN BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Business intelligence (BI) encompasses an environment to capture, integrate, transform, and provide decision support data to end users. Within such a system, online analytical processing (OLAP) enables data from a data warehousing environment to be made available to users in a usable format, thus providing strategic information for decision making. OLAP supports business decision making and business intelligence. In contrast to data warehousing, OLAP provides the channel that connects the online user and online data. Through this channel the user is connected with the information they need to perform various analytical activities including drill down and roll up, slice and dice, and visualizing data in various ways. OLAP tools support many kinds of multidimensional data analyses such as statistical and ratio computation, aggregation, comparison, and forecasting. Interest in OLAP is increasing because it puts more powerful tools online to deliver the right kind information to the right user. This paper describes unique characteristics of OLAP, its role in business intelligence, and value to business. Challenges and future directions will also be discussed.