OLAP or Online Analytical Processing is a specific category of software that allows users to analyze information from multiple database systems simultaneously. Using OLAP, analysts can extract and have a look at business data from different sources or points of view.
Types of OLAP:
- ROLAP: ROLAP or Relational OLAP is an OLAP server that maps multidimensional operations to standard relational operations.
- MOLAP: MOLAP or Multidimensional OLAP uses array-based multidimensional storage engines for multidimensional views on data. Numerous MOLAP servers use two levels of data storage representation to handle dense and sparse datasets.
- HOLAP: HOLAP of Hybrid OLAP combines both ROLAP and MOLAP for faster computation and higher scalability of data.