Choosing to Use an Analytic Workspace

If you determine that OLAP processing would best support the needs of an application, you can use the CWM2_OLAP_AW_CREATE package to replicate your relational data warehouse within an analytic workspace.

Relational and Multidimensional Data Models

The basic data model in a relational database is a table composed of one or more columns of data. In contrast, the basic data model in an analytic workspace is a cube, in which the data is stored as one or more measures with the same dimensionality. See Chapter 4, "Designing Your Database for OLAP" for an explanation of both data models.

Advantages of OLAP

OLAP processing within an analytic workspace is optimized to support complex analytic queries. Moreover, an analytic workspace can provide an efficient means of managing summary data, which may be precalculated or calculated on the fly. See "Why OLAP?" for more information.