Now that we have invested the time and effort to build a robust data warehouse and data-integration process, we can add the final piece to the solution: the on-line analytical processing (OLAP) database. Flexible analytical capabilities are required to really take advantage of the integrated information in the data warehouse and move beyond a simple level of understanding such as measuring the increase in income received.

In this chapter, we extend the manufacturing solution from the previous two chapters by building an Analysis Services database to enable users to flexibly access the information in the data warehouse. We describe how to adjust the data model to better support cubes and show you how to define and manage cubes on top of the relational structures you have already created.