Preparing a Database for the OLAP API

Oracle provides specialized facilities for the development and deployment of Java-based OLAP clients: the OLAP API and the BI Beans (Business Intelligence Beans). The OLAP API directly queries the data warehouse. The BI Beans may be used as a layer between the end user and the OLAP API.

The OLAP API requires the presence of OLAP catalog metadata in the database. You will need to take these steps to prepare your data warehouse for the Oracle OLAP API:

1. Design and implement the relational and/or multidimensional data stores to be used by analytical applications.
2. Create the OLAP catalog metadata.
3. Create the special materialized views that are used by the Oracle OLAP API.

The information that you need to perform these steps is introduced in this chapter.

See Also: Chapter 5, "Creating OLAP Catalog Metadata" provides detailed information about the tools and APIs you can use to enable various warehouse configurations for OLAP access. The syntax of the PL/SQL APIs that create and display OLAP catalog metadata are documented in Part IV, "OLAP Catalog Metadata API Reference".