Using OLAP tools, you often can discover correlations and relationships in your data that you didn't even suspect existed. You can analyze trends and population factors more accurately and in finer detail, look at time-series and statistical factors, and view different types of graphical representations and visualizations to see what they reveal. Some OLAP tools are designed to work directly with warehouse databases on networked workstations, while others are designed to download pieces of a data warehouse onto a desktop PC and do most processing and analysis locally. Establishing and maintaining a data warehouse is one of the biggest information technology projects your organization may ever tackle, short of a complete re-engineering of procedures. It's mandatory that you put a lot of time into investigating alternatives and products to find which ones will serve you best.
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