What is SSAS? You might never hear about SSAS, but you might know Cube or OLAP cube, especially if you are working in finance. A Cube/OLAP cube is SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS). You could think of an OLAP cube as the final product of an SSAS project/solution, while OLAP (Online Analytical Processing ) is the technology behind SSAS. OLAP cubes are mostly created around a specific business purpose. They are part of a company's business intelligence strategy. They provide flexibility and data visibility for ender users to analyze various data, such as total sales, total cost, and sales quantity.
What does an OLAP cube look like? It likes a regular Pivot table in Excel, as in below.
However, an OLAP cube is connected with a database. You can use the Excel refresh function to get the latest data from the database. You can also export an existing cube connection from your Excel file and import it to another Excel file.
Some might ask: Does SSAS still relevant? True, we already have more interactive visualization tools such as Power BI and Tableau. Why we even need OLAP? I would say OLAP still is useful. Compared with Power BI, it provides more flexibility, as OLAP cubes allow end-users to create calculations/analysis through formulas. Compared with Tableau, an OLAP cube is much earlier to start with, though it provides poor visualization.
Want to know how to make your own OLAP cube? Here is a video for beginners.
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