What is an OLAP cube?

An OLAP cube takes measures (sales, quantity) and arranges them across multiple dimensions (time, geography, product) so that totals at every intersection are available quickly. Users then explore interactively.

Core cube operations:

• Slice fix one dimension (just this year).
• Dice filter several dimensions at once.
• Drill down / roll up move between summary and detail.
• Pivot rotate the view to see different faces of the data.

Cubes made classic BI fast, but they must be designed, built and refreshed in advance, and they only answer along the dimensions you pre-modelled. Ask something outside the cube and you are stuck.

iDBQuery gives you cube-like flexibility without building a cube. You can slice, drill down, roll up and pivot simply by asking in plain language, 'break revenue down by product, then by region, then just for Q3', and iDBQuery writes the SQL against your live data each time. Because it is querying your actual sources on demand, you are never limited to pre-computed dimensions: any question your data can answer is fair game, and every result is cited back to source rows. It is interactive multidimensional analysis without the cube-building overhead.