The MPM OLAP Cube

OLAP (On Line Analytical Processing) offers MPM users an additional method for extracting project related data for review and analysis.

The core MPM product provides a suite of standard reports. The Data Warehouse expands upon this with the ability to create custom cross-project reporting on virtually any project data. OLAP gives users the ability to create ad-hoc queries across a broad range of hierarchal dimensions (for example, Projects, WBS, EOC, or Resource) and measures (for example, BCWS, ACWP, or BCWP). Depending on the tool used to access OLAP, these queries can be a matter of clicking and dragging these dimensions and measures to a common cube or pivot table style report template.

A characteristic unique to OLAP is that the measures associated with the hierarchal dimensions are pre-aggregated. This means that as you build your query you see the actual data values almost instantly as the dimensions and measures are placed in your pivot table. There is no need to draft an entire report, determine how to roll up the data, and then separately execute the report before you see results.

The MPM OLAP cube’s data source is the MPM Data Warehouse. A properly installed and populated Data Warehouse is a prerequisite for using OLAP. In addition, the MPM OLAP cube is not automatically refreshed when the Data Warehouse data is re-synced. The MPM OLAP cube has its own scheduler for syncing its content with the Data Warehouse.

The MPM OLAP Cube

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