Understanding OLAP Cubes

When you analyze PeopleSoft General Ledger data, you can look at it from several perspectives: by company, division or business unit, product line, or time. If you use the columns or rows on a typical spreadsheet to analyze PeopleSoft data, it is difficult to represent more than two dimensions (or attributes) at a time.

PeopleSoft provides the tools to build Essbase cubes using PeopleTools Cube Builder, with which you can use different combinations of dimensions to slice and dice the data. For example, you could examine ledger balances for all travel and expense accounts in the training department of the western region for the entire year. You could slice off part of the cube or dice it to access an individual cell or perhaps to view a single business unit. These multidimensional views of financial data can provide valuable information for effective data analysis, decision making, and forecasting.

PeopleSoft integrates Hyperion Essbase (three-dimensional reporting tool) with the PeopleSoft metadata using PeopleTools Cube Builder and leveraging Cube Builder features. PeopleSoft General Ledger also provides the ability to perform incremental updates of the transaction data in the Essbase ledger cube. This makes it possible to recognize material transactions in the cube results without having to build the cube from scratch.

Before you set up General Ledger for OLAP tools, you should be familiar with general OLAP concepts and terminology, as well as the use of PeopleSoft Query, Tree Manager, and Cube Builder.

See PeopleSoft PeopleTools: PeopleSoft Cube Builder.

See also PeopleSoft PeopleTools: PeopleSoft Cube Builder, Integrating with Oracle Smart View.