Session 2: Modeling Your Business Data
Lesson 1 – Model Design

Now that you’ve completed the first session, understand what OLAP is including the concepts behind it, and feel confident that you understand terms like “dimension” and “element”, you’re ready for the next steps: creating a model for your business data. In this first lesson, you’ll learn more about what to consider when you’re in the process of developing your data model. You’ll see how to use existing reports and feedback from the relevant colleagues to figure out what parameters you need when designing dimensions, and in a later lesson, the elements within your dimensions and how to arrange (consolidate) them within a hierarchy or multiple hierarchies (keyword: parallel hierarchies).

When you know what dimensions you need, you’ll have to identify what the source of your information is in order to add it to the system. Static sources are covered in this session in addition to importing sources and a great new feature as of Jedox 7: the time editor for setting up your time dimension. Note: This is shown in a simplified manner in this session to foster your understanding of how the Jedox system is set up and functions so that you’re properly prepared for bigger challenges later – in-depth integration using extract, transform, load (ETL) processes is handled in a later session. Further topics covered in this session include Data-Driven Modeling, a fast way to create dimensions, populate them with elements, create a cube using those dimensions and finally load the values into the cube from an existing workbook. Setting up attributes and automatic translations, called internationalization (another new feature as of Jedox 7), is covered here as well. When your dimensions have been set up, you can move on to creating a cube, which is where your data will be stored. Best practices are also brought up whenever appropriate.

Get familiar with Jedox as a platform by watching our Platform Basics course, where you can learn how to create ad-hoc reports, customized reports, and set up data models among other things. Check out the Jedox Blog for some great practical examples and our user documentation resource at the Jedox Knowledge Base.