Excel Pivot Tables for OLAP Oracle Tips by Burleson Consulting

The Data Warehouse Development Life Cycle

Online Analytical Processing and Oracle

Using Excel Pivot Tables For OLAP

Now, note that we can nest dimensions to create a hierarchy of dimensions. This is a very powerful feature of multidimensional databases and relates to our discussion of attribute hierarchies presented in Chapter 4, Oracle Data Warehouse Design. Figure 5.8 shows an example of nested dimensions, with the state dimension nested within the region dimension. It is also possible to quickly change a displayed fact. For example, in Figure 5.9, the fact is changed from total sales to total cost.

Figure 5.8 Quantity with region-state against year.

Figure 5.9 Total cost with region against salesperson.

Figures 5.10 and 5.11 show how you can quickly rotate dimensions to display total sales against the customer and item number dimensions. It should be obvious that there is incredible power in this ability to change dimensions and quickly recompute facts.

Figure 5.10 Total sales with month against customer.

Figure 5.11 Total sales with month against item number.

As you can see, a pivot table gives a manager the ability to analyze information in any conceivable combination.

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This is an excerpt from "High Performance Data Warehousing", copyright 1997.

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