SAS^® OLAP Server Features

Industrial-strength, multidimensional database

• Designed to handle large volumes of business intelligence data.
• Supports multidimensional (MOLAP) and hybrid (HOLAP) data stores.
• Routines enable SAS procedures to query the SAS OLAP Server by using SQL Pass-Through with reach-through from multidimensional data to the underlying detailed data.
• Native support for open industry standards:
  • OLE DB for OLAP.
  • Fully compliant implementation of MDX query language for communication with third-party clients.
• With SAS software's open architecture, cubes can be surfaced via the Web, through Microsoft Excel as pivot tables, as well as through SAS or other standards-based browsers.

Fast processing of queries

• Multithreaded query engine.
• Data can be spread across multiple disk systems, providing parallel read access for query threads.
• Cluster management for load-balanced servers.

Easy-to-use GUIs for building & maintaining OLAP cubes

• Included with SAS OLAP Server, SAS OLAP Cube Studio makes it easy to define data dimensions and aggregations.
• SAS OLAP Cube Studio is integrated with SAS Data Integration Studio so you can build cubes from cleansed data sources and load them for later use and updating.
• Java-based wizard facilitates designing, creating, updating and tuning OLAP cubes.
• Create a set of dimensions once, then share those with other cubes, providing consistent hierarchies and saving system resources. Update the set and apply across shared cubes.

Optimization of summarized data to conserve system resources

• Seldom accessed data can be stored in a compressed format.
• Frequently queried data can be cached in memory for faster access.
• Dimensions, hierarchies and metrics (metadata) are stored in the cube itself, while data remains in the database and is only queried at run time, reducing data duplication and cube processing time.

Centralized metadata with security credentials preserved on drill-through

• All metadata is stored in a single, open location – the SAS Metadata Server. SAS OLAP Server is fully integrated into the open security model maintained in SAS Metadata Server that is used across all SAS products and solutions.

Multiple language support

• Use translated captions via caption tables.
• Support for natural language format for measures.
• Sophisticated, language-aware ordering of data.

Powerful interfaces for OLAP server monitoring

• Define OLAP data servers and their configuration parameters, including performance logging options.
• Application Response Management (ARM) classes used to monitor all server activities. Result sets can be transferred to SAS or third-party clients, such as HP-UX Workload Manager, in order to monitor activity and performance.