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A Parting Word
In this tutorial, we ventured beyond earlier topics surrounding the reporting of data, and transitioned into the realm of OLAP data source design and creation. We explored two approaches to creating local cubes within Office 2000, discussing many of the foundational concepts behind the architecture of multidimensional data sources: We first created a local cube from an existing Excel PivotTable report and then we performed a step-by-step exploration of a more design-oriented route by using the OLAP Cube Wizard to accomplish cube creation in a more flexible manner.
We delved into many practical aspects of putting the functionality to work immediately, discussing ways that local (or offline) cubes can meet the business requirements of distributed information consumers and add value to the organization in general. Our exercises included the creation of a local cube from an existing server cube and the creation of a second local cube from a relational data source. Finally, we discussed the advantages of using our local cube design process as a flexible and portable means of rapidly prototyping enterprise OLAP data sources.