Offline OLAP Cubes
Cubes used in online analytical processing (OLAP) provide a multidimensional view of data warehouse data that end users find easy to use and explore as they search for answers to business questions. Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Analysis Services provides the capability through its PivotTable® Service component for client applications to create subsets of data warehouse cubes and save them locally for offline analysis. End-user applications can also use PivotTable Service in an offline mode to create offline cubes directly from relational databases.
Third-party applications and custom applications can use PivotTable Service to create and manage offline cubes. One end-user application that provides offline cube support is Microsoft Excel 2000. For more information, see the Excel documentation.
Offline cubes are created and managed by end-user applications and generally have little impact on data warehouse or cube design. Maintenance of offline cube data is the responsibility of the end user, who can refresh data from online cubes or update offline cubes created from local databases as necessary. Offline cubes do not interfere with normal data warehouse and cube management and maintenance.