Learn more

OlapCube will let you create local cubes (files with .cub extension) from
data stored in any relational database (including MySQL, PostgreSQL,
Microsoft Access,SQL Server, SQL Server Express, Oracle, Oracle Express).

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

But, what is an OLAP cube ?

An OLAP cube is a specially designed database that is optimized for reporting.

While most databases designed for online transaction processing such as those
used in claims processing are designed for efficiency in data storage, OLAP cubes
are designed for efficiency in data retrieval.

This means that the data is stored in such a way as to make it easy and efficient
for reporting.

Regular "relational" databases treat all data into the database similarly, however
OLAP cubes categorize data into "dimensions" and "measures".

Measures represent items that are counted, summarized or aggregated, such as costs
or units of service.

Dimensions are variables by which measures are summarized, such as hospitals,
physicians, or dates of service. This organization of data greatly facilitates the
ability to formulate data requests based on real-life situations.
In addition, many of queries that could be posed to the data are "pre-aggregated"
in the database such that the answers have already been precalculated and can be
reported without delay.

The term "cube" comes from the geometric object that has three dimensions.
OLAP cubes can have many more dimensions than 3, but the term continues to apply.