The problem of getting combined and generalized information fast from an active enterprise database becomes actual having its data been accumulated for some years. The classical reports even if optimized for particular purposes do not let one obtain fast the enterprise information with differently data-dependent views. The problem is proper to absolutely all the systems that accumulate large data volumes of information for further processing. To solve the problem is the destiny of the OLAP (on-line analytical processing) technology. The technology nowadays acquiring more and more popularity is assigned to be active and operative handle for multidimensional data. In other words, the OLAP allows the user itself without any programmers assistance to gain the ability to draw out manufacturing-activity reports to be analyzed in the view of the enterprises economic activity.

     Peculiarities and application stages of the OLAP technology with the "Universal" complex.

• The data source is an active enterprise-wide accounting complex "Universal"
• The OLAP users are neither programmers nor administrators of a database but "Universal" users. They could be managers, analysts, bookkeepers, economists, workers sale and financial departments.
• Of all the complex set of accounted with enterprise database indexes the user takes the only piece of information needed to be analyzed that reflects requested index in view of its interrelation with others. On the basis of the selected indexes the application creates specially buffered database being so-called OLAP cube. The cube is not necessary 3-dimentional but has as many dimensions as many indexes have been selected.
• The user communicates to the application what evaluations over data should be executed. The application transfers data from the operative database to a temporary database (OLAP-cube) and then gets ready to respond to a user request.
• The user interactively requests the system with different combinations of two-dimensional data edge. The program reports with table or graphical view.
• Summary tables generated with the OLAP technology could by your request be converted to the Microsoft Excel format with getting all the benefits of using this popular program for further processing and analysis.
• The data processing is iteration process following which the user step by step approaches to the point looked for just watching OLAP-cube data in different views.

• Selecting detailed information from data storage using flexible filtering method on accounted data.
• Complex estimation of stored data, such as getting summary indexes, data generalizing and aggregation, and multidimensional analysis.
• Analysis of generalized data in view of its dynamic changing for time periods of day, week, month, quarter, year.
• Using OLAP as an auxiliary tool in searching for functional and logical regularities of data stored

     To define the cube it is necessary to point out the following:

• Type of aggregate function used while generating the result data - the cube basis. It is possible to use the following functions: sum, average, minimum, maximum, number of entries.
• The number and types of the cube dimensions. While the number of the cube dimensions is not limited each dimension type could be taken as one of the following:
  • Object of analytical/quantitative accounting
  • Their groups
  • Balance accounts
  • Currencies
• Data sources. In "Universal" their part are taken by primary documents. There might be selected a number of primary documents and for each of them a field to be used while generating the cube.
• It is necessary determine what the fields will be used as values for the cube dimensions. As the dimensions of accounted objects there may be taken their parameters as well. For instance, we can define a cube axis not only as a "Contractor" but also as a "City" that the contractor is in.

     The defining of the cube structure is followed by the generating of the cube data itself. Thanks to the optimization of the SQL query that represents the basis for extracting the cube data, the time of generating the cube taken for an average enterprise (3 workstations) over two years with dozens of documents a day, does not exceed seconds. Of course this time depends on the number of the cube dimensions.

     The advantage of the OLAP technology is that all the information that may interest an analyst is already stored in a generated cube. Thus it is possible to make any two-dimensional views of the cube information. Such views could use both all the cube information and its partial aspect restricted by some filters.
     The analysis itself is rather simple. Having a cube generated it is necessary to point out two dimensions which the plane view will be built upon. The example deals with analysis of the cost of delivered from a number of cities products which belong to different types of accounted objects. The plane table that the example depicts is constructed using cube data in quite a few seconds. It is obvious that combining a couple of dimensions (using two combo boxes at the top of the window) it is possible to get any plane section of the cube almost in the twinkling of an eye. It is worthy to notice that besides the dimensions defined while the cube construction there is one automatically appended that is responsible for the time axis permitting to group cube data by days, weeks, months, quarters and years. The extracted data could be represented as a graph with the MS Excel system.

     A significant role in creating such a powerful tool has played the recent release of 6.2 version of Advantage Database Server. Considerable speed increase of SQL requests processing implemented in it allowed to achieve excellent time response rates in handling tremendous data stored with "Universal".