OLAP

OLAP is an acronym for online analytical processing. It is an approach to quickly provide the answer to complex analytical queries. It is part of broader business intelligence category which also includes ETL, relational reporting and data mining. The typical applications of OLAP are in business reporting for sales, marketing, management reporting, business performance management (BPM), budgeting and forecasting, financial reporting and similar areas.

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Databases configured for OLAP employ a multidimensional data model, allowing for complex analytical and ad-hoc queries with a rapid execution time. Nigel Pendse has suggested that an alternative and perhaps more descriptive term to describe the concept of OLAP is Fast Analysis of Shared Multidimensional Information (FASMI).

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Business intelligence: The phrase business intelligence (BI) may refer to:...

ETL: ETL may stand for:...

Data mining: Data mining, also known as knowledge-discovery in databases (KDD), is the practice of automatically searching large stores of data for patterns. To do this, data mining uses computational techniques from statistics and pattern recognition....