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Essbase Beginners Guide Chapter-I

Description:
The purpose of this tutorial is to provide you with an understanding of the OLAP
concepts. What all you should know to kick start learning Hyperion Essbase.

History:
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Gaurav Shrivastava
Amit Sharma

24-Nov-2010
25-Nov-2010

Table of Contents
Title
Page No.
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1). On-Line Analytical Processing....4

2). Cube.......5
3). Slicing....6
4). Dicing............9
5). Rotating....10
6). Dimensions....11
7). Categories.......12

8). Measures..13
9). Nesting......14
10). Aggregations....15
11). Multi Dimension..16
11). Summary....16

The purpose of this tutorial is to provide you with an understanding of the OLAP
concepts.
Upon successful completion of this tutorial, you will be able to:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Define OLAP
Explain OLAP cubes
Describe Dimensions
Explain Categories
Describe Measures
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6. Describe Nesting
7. Explain Aggregation
8. Multidimensional Database

On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP)

What is OLAP? OLAP is more than an acronym that means Online Analytical
Processing. OLAP is a category of software tools that provides analysis of data
stored in a database. With OLAP, analysts, managers, and executives can gain
insight into data through fast, consistent, interactive access to a wide variety of
possible views. Stated another way, OLAP is a category of applications and
technologies
for
collecting,
managing,
processing,
and
presenting
multidimensional data for analysis and management purposes. A widely adopted
definition for OLAP used today in five key words is: Fast Analysis of Shared
Multidimensional Information (FASMI).
Fast refers to the speed that an OLAP system is able to deliver most responses to
the end user.
Analysis refers to the ability of an OLAP system to manage any business logic
and statistical analysis relevant for the application and user. In addition, the
system must allow users to define new ad hoc calculations as part of the
analysis and report without having to program them.
Shared refers to the ability of an OLAP system being able to implement all
security requirements necessary for confidentiality and the concurrent
update locking at an appropriate level when multiple write access is
required.
Multidimensional refers to a concept that is the primary requirement to OLAP.
An OLAP system must provide a multidimensional view of data. This includes
supporting hierarchies and multiple hierarchies.
Information refers to all of the data and derived data needed, wherever the
data resides and however much of the data is relevant for the application.

Cubes
What is an OLAP Cube? As you saw in the definition of OLAP, the key
requirement is multidimensional. OLAP achieves the multidimensional
functionality by using a structure called a cube. The OLAP cube provides the
multidimensional way to look at the data. The cube is comparable to a table
in a relational database.
The specific design of an OLAP cube ensures report optimization. The design
of many databases is for online transaction processing and efficiency in data
storage, whereas OLAP cube design is for efficiency in data retrieval. In other
words, the storage of OLAP cube data is in such a way as to make easy and
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efficient reporting. A traditional relational database treats all the data in a

similar manner. However, OLAP cubes have categories of data called
dimensions and measures. For now, a simple definition of dimensions and
measures will suffice. A measure represents some fact (or number) such as
cost or units of service. A dimension represents descriptive categories of
data such as time or location.
The term cube comes from the geometric object and implies three
dimensions, but in actual use, the cube may have more than three
dimensions.
The following illustration graphically represents the concept of an OLAP cube.

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Slicing
A slice is a subset of a multidimensional array corresponding to a single value
for one or more members of the dimensions not in the subset. For example, if
the member Actual is selected from the Scenario dimension, then the sub-cube
of all the remaining dimensions is the slice that is specified. The data omitted
from this slice would be any data associated with the non-selected members of
the Scenario dimension, for example Budget, Variance, Forecast, etc. From an
end user perspective, the term slice most often refers to a two- dimensional
page selected from the cube.

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Figure 2: Slicing-Wireless Mouse

Figure 2 illustrates slicing the product Wireless Mouse. When you slice as in
the example, you have data for the Wireless Mouse for the years and
locations as a result. Stated another way, you have effectively filtered the
data to display the measures associated with the Wireless Mouse product.

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Figure 3: Slicing-Asia
Figure 3 illustrates slicing the location Asia. When you slice as in the
example, you have data for Asia for the product and years as a result. Stated
another way, you have effectively filtered the data to display the measures
associated with the Asia location.

Figure 1: OLAP Cube

In figure 1, time, product, and location represent the dimensions of the cube,
while 174 represents the measure. Recall that a dimension is a category of
data and a measure is a fact or value.
Three important concepts associated with analyzing data using OLAP cubes
and an OLAP reporting tool are slicing, dicing, and rotating.
Dicing
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A related operation to slicing is dicing. In the case of dicing, you define a subcube of the original space. The data you see is that of one cell from the cube.
Dicing provides you the smallest available slice.
Figure 4 provides a graphical representation of dicing.

Figure 4: Dicing
Rotating
Rotating changes the dimensional orientation of the report from the cube data. For
example, rotating may consist of swapping the rows and columns, or moving one
of the row dimensions into the column dimension, or swapping an off-spreadsheet
dimension with one of the dimensions in the page display (either to become one of
the new rows or columns), etc. You also may hear the term pivoting. Rotating and
pivoting are the same thing.

Dimensions
Recall, that a dimension represents descriptive categories of data such as time or
location. In other words, dimensions are broad groupings of descriptive data about
a major aspect of a business, such as dates, markets, or products. The value of
OLAP in reporting data is having levels within the dimensions. Each dimension
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includes different levels of categories. Dimension levels allow you to view general
things about your data and then look at the details of your data.
Think of the levels of categories as a hierarchy. For example, your OLAP cube could
have a time dimension. The time dimension then could have year, quarter, and
month as the levels, as in Figure 6. Another example is location as a dimension. For
the location dimension, you could have region, country, and city as the levels
(shown in Figure 6). An important concept to OLAP is drilling. Drilling refers to the
ability to drill-up or drill-down. These levels of categories (hierarchies) are what
provide the ability to drill-up or drill-down on data in an OLAP cube. When you drilldown on a dimension, you increase the detail level of viewing the data. For
example, you start with the year and view that data, but you want to see the data
by each quarter of the year. You would drill-down to see the quarterly data. You
could drill-down again to see the monthly data within a specific quarter.

Categories
Dimensions have members or categories. A category is an item that matches a
specific description or classification such as years in a time dimension. Categories
can be at different levels of information within a dimension. You can group any
category into a more general category. For instance, you can group a set of dates
into a month, a set of months into quarters, and a set of quarters into years. In this
example, years, quarters, and months are all categories of the time dimension.
Categories have parents and children. A parent category is the next higher level of
another category in a drill-up path. For example, 2003 is the parent category of
2003 Q1, 2003 Q2, 2003 Q3, and 2003 Q4. A child category is the next lower level
category in a drill-down path. For example, January is a child category of 2003 Q1.
Figure 7 below shows you the time, product, and location dimensions with the
parent and children categories. In the time dimension, you see the parent Year
Category and the children Quarter Category and Month Category.

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Figure 7: Categories
Measures
The tutorial to this point has provided you with a definition of OLAP, a description
of cubes, the meaning of dimensions, and a description of categories. The focus
now is an explanation of measures.
The measures are the actual data values that occupy the cells as defined by the
dimensions selected. Measures include facts or variables typically stored as
numerical fields, which provide the focal point of investigation using OLAP. For
instance, you are a manufacturer of cellular phones. The question you want
answered is how many xyz model cell phones (product dimension) a particular
plant (location dimension) produced during the month of January 2003 (time
dimension). Using OLAP, you found that plant a produced 2,500 xyz model cell
phones during January 2003. The measure in this example is the 2,500.
Additionally, measures occupy a confusing area of OLAP theory. Some believe that
measures are like any other dimension. For example, one can think of a
spreadsheet containing cell phones produced by month and plant as a twodimensional picture, but the values (measures)the cell phones produced
effectively form a third dimension. However, although this dimension does have
members (e.g. actual production, forecasted production, planned production), it
does not have its own hierarchy. It adopts the hierarchy of the dimension it is
measuring, so production by month consolidates into production by quarter,
production by quarter consolidates into production by year.
The example in Figure 8 shows the measure Volume of Product. Each value in
Figure 8 is the measure of Volume of Product per year listed by product. From
Figure 8, ABC Company produced 84,000 modems in 2003.
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Figure 8: Measures
Nesting
Nesting is a function in which you have more than one dimension or category in a
row or column. Nesting provides a display that shows the results of a multidimensional query that returns a sub-cube, i.e., more than a two-dimensional slice
or page. The column/row labels will display the extra dimensionality of the output
by nesting the labels describing the members of each dimension.
Figure 9 illustrates nesting. In the top table, the nested dimensions are time (year)
and location (countries) in rows. By nesting in this example, you can see the
volume of products for each North American Country in 2003. In the bottom table,
the nested dimensions are products (devices) and location (countries) in columns.
By nesting in this example, you can see the volume of products by quarter for each
North American Country for 2003 Q1 and Q2.
Figure 9: Nesting

Aggregation
One of the keywords for OLAP is fast. Recall that fast refers to the speed that an
OLAP system is able to deliver most responses to the end user. Essential for OLAP
is to produce fast query times. This is one of the basic tenets for OLAPthe
capability to naturally control data requires quick retrieval of information. In
general, the more calculations that OLAP needs to perform in order to produce a
piece of information, the slower the response time. Consequently, to keep query
times fast, pieces of information that users frequently will access, but need to be
calculated, are pre-aggregated. Pre-aggregated data means that the OLAP system
calculates the values and then stores them in the database as new data. An
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example of a type of data that may be pre-calculated is summary data, such as

failure rate for days, months, quarters, or years.
Approaches to aggregation affect both the size of the database and the response
time of queries. The more values a system pre-calculates, the more likely a user
request already has a value that has already been calculated, thus increasing the
response time because the value does not need to be requested. On the other
hand, if a system pre-calculates all possible values, not only will the size of the
database be unmanageable, but also the time it takes to aggregate will be long.
Additionally, when values are added to the database, or perhaps changed, that
information again needs to be propagated through the pre-calculated values that
depend on the new data. Thus, updating the database can be time-consuming if
too many values are pre-calculated for the database.

Figure 10: Aggregation

Multi Dimensional Overview
Hyperion Essbase basically a special data base that is multidimensional database
management system (MDBMS). Essbase stands for "Extended Spread Sheet Database". Essbase
products provide analysis solutions to the business user. Essbase quickly leverage and integrate data
from multiple existing data sources and distribute filtered information to end-user or business user.
Essbase provide users interactive through Microsoft Excel. Essbase explore data in real time and along
familiar business dimensions, enabling them to perform speed-of-thought analytics.
Multi-Dimensional refers to the representation of any data in spreadsheet format. A typical spreadsheet
may display time intervals along column headings, and account names on row headings.
Tow dimensional Excel view.

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Business user wants to break down these values by city, then one more dimension is require. Three
dimensional Excel view.

Multidimensionality Overview

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Multidimensional database means cube data which have more than two
dimensions. Relational data bases or tabular data are single dimension data
bases. A multidimensional database is an extended form of a two- dimensional
data array, such as a spreadsheet, generalized to encompass many dimensions.
When you have data in dimensional form analyze information is more easy and
understandable. Data reside in Hierarchal structure form in Multidimensional data.
Data retrieval query run faster in multidimensional database.

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You can use multidimensionality to:

Analyze the same business information from different perspectives
Let different users easily analyze the information that they want to see in
a large database, knowing that they are all working from the same
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source data
Allow data storage and analysis to occur at different levels of detail
Set the foundation for drilling down
Conceptualize the way analysts have been thinking for decades

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Summary
To summarize what you learned in this tutorial:

OLAP is a category of software tools that provides Fast Analysis of Shared

Multidimensional Information (FASMI).
An OLAP cube is the concept that achieves the multidimensional functionality
that provides the method to look at data from a variety of angles.

Slicing, dicing, and rotating are methods in OLAP that change the view of the
data in different ways.

Dimensions are the descriptive categories of data that apply to major

aspects of a business and that dimensions have hierarchies.

Categories are items that match a precise organization that you use to
perform drill-up or drill-down operations.

Measures are the actual data values for a select set of dimensions.

Nesting provides the ability to add more than one dimension or category to a
column or row.

Aggregation is the process of pre-calculating summary data values.

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