Cube—Data in OLAP databases is stored in cubes. Cubes are made up of dimensions and measures. A cube may have many dimensions.
Dimensions—In an OLAP database cube categories of information are called dimensions. Some dimensions could be Location, Products, Stores, and Time.
MDX—MDX (Multi Dimensional eXpressions) is the language used to give instructions to OLE DB for OLAP- compliant databases. When an OLAP query section is built, <product Interactive Reporting is translating those into MDX instructions. When the query is refreshed, MDX is sent to the database server. The data the server returns to the Interactive Reporting document file is the collection of records that answers the query.
Measures—Measures are the numeric values in an OLAP database cube that are available for analysis. The measures could be margin, cost of goods sold, unit sales, budget amount, and so on.
Members—In a OLAP database cube, members are the content values for a dimension. In the location dimension, they could be San Francisco, Japan, Paris, 35 Main Street, Tokyo, USA, France, Rome, and so on. These are all values for location.
Multidimensional—Multidimensional databases create cubes of aggregated data that anticipate how users think about business models. These cubes also deliver this information efficiently and quickly. Cubes consist of dimensions and measures. Dimensions are categories of information. For example, locations, stores and products are typical dimensions. Measures are the content values in a database that are available for analysis.