OLAP is designed for business managers to analyze consolidated enterprise data in real time. OLAP addresses complex “what if” questions, creating scenarios to test planning strategies.
Essbase supports OLAP, making possible a multidimensional, multiuser database that is accessed with standard retrieval tools.
Essbase Server supports multiple views of data sets so users can analyze relationships between data categories such as:
How did Product A sell last month? How does this compare to the same month over the last five years? How will it sell next month?
Did customers return Product A last year? Were returns due to defects? Did a specific plant manufacture defective products?
Did commissions and pricing affect how salespeople sold Product A?
You can use Integration Services to create an Essbase database to answer these types of questions quickly. You can use Integration Services Console to create logical data models that represents source databases.