Storage Types in Data Warehousing

MOLAP - Multidimensional OLAP

The MOLAP environment consists of a multi-dimensional cube with all possible perspectives pre-calculated. Therefore MOLAP applications do have a high performance. At the same time the need a lot of disk capacity to store all the pre-calculated figures.

ROLAP - Relational OLAP

The ROLAP environment consist of a relational database with a OLAP query engine. Every information need is calculated on the fly by the OLAP query engine. therefore ROLAP most times has a slower performance. Never the less, it needs less disk space to store the data.

HOLAP - Hybrid OLAP

The HOLAP environment consists of both a relation database and a preconfigured multi-dimension cube. Most times you can be flexible in keeping information in the relational database and/or the preconfigured multi-dimensional cube.

WOLAP - Web enabled OLAP

The frontend user can access the OLAP application through a web browser.

DOLAP - Desktop OLAP

All the OLAP functionality can be performed on a Desktop PC. Most other OLAP mentioned here are client-server and/or server based database applications.