Oracle 10g Data Warehousing

Chapter 15. OLAP

Once a data warehouse has been built, a business can deploy a host of business intelligence applications to derive full benefit from the data. These include ad hoc querying and reporting applications such as Discoverer and Reports, which were discussed in Chapter 13. These applications may be used by all levels of an organization to analyze data about the ongoing operation of the business. Other applications, such as demand planning, sales forecasting, corporate budgeting, and financial modeling, require specialized knowledge and algorithms to operate. These types of analyses are usually performed by a select few analysts or financial experts. A common aspect of business intelligence applications is that data is analyzed along ...