Data is meaningless unless it can be analyzed and interpreted. Analysis depends on consolidating and summarizing data through mathematical operations that reveal meaningful relationships, also called aggregation. The result is a summary of the data at a higher level, which summarizes and consolidates data from a lower level.
Aggregation is a critical feature of data analysis. Successful and rapid interpretation of data requires an easy method of aggregating data and representing it for easy interpretation. Aggregation techniques are easy to master. With the simple drag-and-drop of a data item, you can reorganize your data. Remove an item or drill down into your data, and you disaggregate your data.
Interactive Reporting provides a great deal of flexibility in how you choose to aggregate your data. One possibility is to aggregate your data at the time of your query, called server aggregation or preaggregation. In this case, the database server actually performs the aggregation for you.
An advantage of server aggregation is the network traffic is reduced and takes less time because the database server. If you preaggregate data at the server, you might not reach any substantial level of data because detailed data was excluded data by preaggregating. If you do not know your database tables, you could eliminate data that might be important for analysis. Also, preaggregation requires more server processing resources.
Alternatively, you can aggregate data on your desktop without involving the server. Interactive Reporting automatically aggregates your data for you in report sections.