ContourCube – new OLAP concept

Why OLAP?

In today’s fast-paced, information-driven economy, organizations heavily rely on real-time business information to make accurate decisions. The number of individuals within an enterprise who have a need to perform more sophisticated analysis is growing. With their ever-increasing requirements for data manipulating tools, end users cannot be already satisfied with flat grids and a fixed set of parameters for query execution. OLAP is best technology that empowers users with complete ease in manipulating their data. The very moment you replace your common grid with an OLAP interface users will be able independently to perform various ad-hoc queries, arbitrarily filter data, rotate a table, drill down, get desired summaries, and rank. From users’ standpoint, information system equipped with an OLAP-tool gains a new quality, helps not only get information but also summarize and analyze it. From developer’s point of view, OLAP is an elegant way to avoid thankless and tedious programming of multiple on-line and printed reports. A traditional transactional system will make it possible both to register business transactions and provide users with immediate answers to questions, such as, what goods have sold best this month, what seasonal fluctuations in sales are, how consumer preferences differ across various regions. The programmatic ContourCube component enables flat grids to be replaced with powerful OLAP-grids and charts at desired parts of your systems and empowers any information system with Business Intelligence capabilities.

Why OLAP client?

There are two common ways to realize OLAP solutions. The first way is implemented through an OLAP Server with calculations being executed on a separate computer, second way leverages an OLAP client to perform calculations on a user machine. The OLAP Server requires additional investments and permanent maintenance and does not use power of individual PCs. Nevertheless, it enables huge volume of data to be managed. The OLAP client is cheap and does not require any maintenance though it is capable of manipulating less volume of data. Meanwhile, hardware capabilities are growing consistently and rapidly and today a common personal computer has tremendous capacity while processor providers do not seem intend to fall behind. Concurrently, it’s worth to review accepted concepts and try to guess what may happen tomorrow. May it so turn out that OLAP calculations over general sets of business data become a trivial task? Won’t it happen today? ContourCube can process hundreds of thousand of records on a typical modern PC, but aggregating records, while a SQL query is executed in relational database server, means millions of records. This entirely meets most applications’ requirements.

ROLAP or MOLAP?

By Stephen Bucaro

Why would you want to build your own computer? Not to save money. With a decent manufactured computer costing less than $400.00, it will cost you more to buy parts to build your own. There are five advantages to building rather than buying.

1. Most manufactured computers are build using proprietary components. When (not if) your computer breaks down, you can’t use off-the-shelf replacement parts. You have to pay a lot more for manufacturer's proprietary replacement parts.

2. Low cost manufactured computers use cheapest components. These components are marginal or below specifications. When you build your own computer, you select quality of each component.

3. When you have built your own computer, you are more knowledgeable and capable of performing your own troubleshooting. You don’t have to pay $75.00 per hour for a service technician.

4. When your computer becomes outdated, you can easily upgrade it yourself. You will be a better judge of when its more logical to build a new computer from scratch, or to update old one.

5. You will feel pride and confidence of having built your own computer. And, you will have proof that you really are smarter than your friends!

Yes, you can build your own computer. Today’s plug-and-play mother boards with on-board video, sound, and network circuitry make it easy. You can build your own computer in 90 minutes. 30 minutes to build computer plus an hour of waiting while installing operating system.

When I build a computer, first component that I consider is case. Here is what to look for in a case:

* The form factor

Make sure your case style matches form factor of available motherboards. Most motherboards today are ATX form factor. You should buy an ATX style case. Do not buy an AT style case. The AT style case has been obsolete for years. Some computer component providers are trying to unload their obsolete AT style cases to inexperienced computer hobbyists.

* The power supply

Don’t buy a case with only a 200 or 250 watt power supply. A 300 watt power supply should be sufficient, but if you plan to install a lot of expansion cards like 3D graphics accelerators, multiple hard drives, CD burners, etc. then you need to consider a case with a more powerful power supply.