OLAP Data

Measures

The measures are the actual data values that occupy the cells in the data cube. For instance, each value in Figure 2 is the measure of Volume of Product per year listed by product.

Nesting

Nesting is a way of displaying results that have been broken down into their categories; it is a visual table that returns a sub-cube for specific data. For those familiar with relational database, it is the visualization of a query. For instance, Figure 3 below is nested data that gives a detailed view of the breakdown of sales in North America for Cell phones and modems.

Now that we have introduced some of the major aspects of an OLAP system, we can describe some of its tools that can be used.