OlapCube 1.5

OlapCube 1.5 is a useful tool to analyze data. OlapCube will let you create local cubes (files with .cub extension) from data stored in any relational database (including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft Access, SQL aServer, SQL Server Express, Oracle, Oracle Express).

You can explore the resulting cube with OlapCube Reader. Or you can use Microsoft Excel to create rich and customized reports.

The OLAP cube consists of numeric facts called measures which are categorized by dimensions. An OLAP cube is a data structure that allows fast analysis of data. The arrangement of data into cubes overcomes a limitation of relational databases. Relational databases are not well suited for near instantaneous analysis and display of large amounts of data. Instead, they are better suited for creating records from a series of transactions. Although many report-writing tools exist for relational databases, these are slow when the whole database must be summarized.

OLAP cubes can be thought of as extensions to the two-dimensional array of a spreadsheet. For example a company might wish to analyze some financial data by product, by time-period, by city, by type of revenue and cost, and by comparing actual data with a budget. These additional methods of analyzing the data are known as dimensions.

A financial analyst might want to view or "pivot" the data in various ways, such as displaying all the cities down the page and all the products across a page. This could be for a specified period, version and type of expenditure

Each of the elements of a dimension could be summarized using a hierarchy. The hierarchy is a series of parent-child relationships, typically where a parent member represents the consolidation of the members which are its children. Parent members can be further aggregated as the children of another parent. For example May 2005 could be summarized into Second Quarter 2005 which in turn would be summarized in the Year 2005.

Major Features:

1. Easy to get started! OlapCube covers all major databases (including Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Access or any ODBC source) and works fine with text files too.
   
   • 4 simple steps:
   • • Connect to your datasource
     • Add your tables
     • Drag and drop the fields to create dimensions and measures
     • Build your cube and you're done!
   • Cube designer also includes advanced transformation features that help you transform your data to suit your needs.
2. Browse your cubes with flexible OlapCube Reader:  offers a very flexible and intuitive way to browse your data.
   
   • Sub-second response times
   • Drill down
   • The reader is intentionally built with a minimal feature set to reduce the learning curve.
   • Your data is available even when you're offline.
3. Use Excel to create great reports: In Excel, cubes looks like normal pivot table and charts at the first glance, but with great benefits.
   
   • Data loads instantly
   • Data is organized hierarchically
   • No need to import data
   • Calculated members
   • Use Excel 2007 to unleash the full power of cubes!
4. Use these cubes in [Google Docs] with the Panorama Analytics Gadget
   
   • After logging in to your Google dashboard, click ”Add stuff” on the top right side of the page.
   • Search for "Pivot Table for Online and Enterprise Data" and click "Add it now" to add the Gadget.
   • Login using your Google account.
     

Requirements: Windows 2000 or later