Hour 20. Multidimensional Reporting Against OLAP Data

Through the first 19 hours, you have been exposed to a wide variety of the reporting capabilities found in Crystal Reports version 9. Up to this point, however, all the reports you have created were based on relational data sources otherwise known as Online Transactional Processing (OLTP) databases where most organizations generally keep their operational data.

In many organizations and for many people today, data reporting ends with Crystal Reports pointing at existing relational data sources such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, Sybase, or even Microsoft Access. All these relational databases have been designed for the efficient storage of information. These databases were not designed optimally however for the efficient extraction of data for aggregated analysis across multiple dimensions that is where OLAP databases excel.

OLAP stands for Online Analytical Processing and is designed to allow business users to quickly identify patterns and trends in their data while reporting against multiple dimensions at once. Examples of dimensions for analysis include time, geographic region, product line, financial measure, customer, supplier, salesperson, and so on. Crystal Reports 9 provides exciting new OLAP-based reporting capabilities. These will be introduced in this hour, in addition to a brief introduction to Crystal Report's OLAP-centric sister product Crystal Analysis.

In this hour, the following will be covered:

  • Introduction to OLAP concepts and OLAP Reporting

  • New OLAP features in Crystal Reports 9

  • Creation of OLAP-based Crystal Reports

  • Introduction to Crystal Analysis



Sams Teach Yourself Crystal Reports 9 in 24 Hours
Sams Teach Yourself Crystal Reports 9 in 24 Hours
ISBN: B003D7JUVW
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 230

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