OLAP Cube in Excel and Pivot Table From External

Data

OLAP Cubes provide a convenient way to crunch data in Excel. Imagine a Pivot Table pulling information
from thousands or millions of data points with hundreds of columns and you being able to share this
humongous data set with colleagues using an Excel spreadsheet that weights nothing more than a few
Kilobytes. Add to this the ability to update the source data while the users get to look at that information
real time. Thats what a Pivot Table based on an OLAP cube can do for you. A disclaimer : You will not be
able to create an OLAP cube in Excel 2007 the functionality has been deprecated. To create an OLAP
cube you will have to rely on good ol Excel 2003 though you can create a pivot table in Excel 2007 with an
OLAP cube as the source.

What is an OLAP Cube?

Wiki defines an OLAP cube (Online Analytical Processing) as a data structure that allows fast analysis of
data. It can also be defined as the capability of manipulating and analyzing data from multiple
perspectives. Each dimension of an OLAP cube would define one data category. Obviously, the cube is
misnomer an OLAP cube can have more than three dimensions.

OLAP Cubes in Excel

Excel provides a set of drivers that can be used to connect to a whole host of data sources and create
your own olap cubes. (We will learn about creating an OLAP cube a little later.) During the preparation of
an OLAP cube, Excel will connect to a data source and then read data from it. Once the cube has fed itself
with the data points that it needs, it can act as a standalone data source. The data residing in the OLAP
cube can then be presented in an Excel spreadsheet using a pivot table. In that sense, the OLAP cube
acts as the data source for the pivot table (normal pivot tables will typically have their source data residing
in an excel spreadsheet). The cube processes all the requests for slicing & dicing of the data sent by the
pivot table. Whenever a fresh copy of the data is requested by the pivot table, the OLAP cube fetches the
latest information from the data source, refreshes itself and then continues to service all the requests.
An important point to note here is that the pivot tables size is reduced to a fraction of what a normal pivot
table would have been. For all its data processing abilities, the pivot table relies upon the OLAP cube. The
physical separation of the Pivot Table from the source data, achieved via an OLAP cube, allows the source
data to be placed anywhere in the network and be updated real-time independent of the pivot table. If the
network connection is fast enough, the user will never know the difference but will surely appreciate the
compactness.

How to create an OLAP cube in Excel

Lets first begin by looking at the source data. One major advantage that an OLAP cube provides the data
miner is that it can pack a lot more data than an ordinary excel spreadsheet would. The other advantage is
that you can use a variety of data sources including txt, csv , asc and others. So lets start with a comma
separated file with the following data points product, region, date and sales.
Create a new directory and place the file with the raw data in it. In our case, the file is
namedsource_data.txt in a directory named CUBE.
Now open up a fresh workbook using Excel 2003. Click on Data from the menu and then select Import
External Data followed by New Database Query.
Select a new data source. Press Ok.

Provide a name to the data source and select the type of driver that you want to use for the purpose. In our
case, since we are using a .txt file as the raw data, we will use the Microsoft Text Driver. Press Ok.
Uncheck the Use Current Directory checkbox and select the directory where the raw data file has been
placed.

Three clicks on the Ok button bring you back and opens up the Query Wizard.

The left hand box has a list of the data sources in the directory that we selected in the previous step. You
can use more than one data source at a time, though in our case, we will be sticking to just one. Move all
the items (or the ones that you like) to the box on the right and press next. You can provide filtering and
sorting options in the next two forms but we will just give them a miss for now and simply click Next which
brings us to the final screen.

Heres where the difference between Excel 2003 and Excel 2007 lie in terms of creating OLAP cubes.
While in Excel 2003, you will see three options (shown below), in Excel 2007 you only be presented with
two options with the option to Create an OLAP cube from this query having been taken away.
Fortunately for us, we still have access to Excel 2003 and we choose the third option the one to create
the OLAP cube. On pressing Ok, the OLAP Cube wizard opens up.

Press ok and move onto the next step where we specify the field that we would like to summarize. Think of
this as the data field in a pivot table. In our case, it is sales since we would like to analyze sales across
product, regions and date ranges.
Press Next. Specify the fields that we would like to use to make the OLAP cube. Choose only the ones
that you are sure that you would like to use choosing everything, especially if you have a large number of
fields, can slow down the cubes response time.
Press Next where we provide the location where we can store the cube.

Press Ok and the application will provide a new form asking for the path where to store the OLAP query .
The moment you press ok, the OLAP cube creation process begins and may take a few seconds. This is
the points where Excel pack the cube with information from the raw data file. The moment the process is
complete, the application would open up the familiar Pivot Table Creation Wizard form. At this point, if the
sole purpose was to make an OLAP cube, we can cancel (press esc key). If you would like to proceed, you
can use specify the pivot table layout and save the file. In our case, since we wanted Excel to create the
cube for us, we click Cancel. Lets move over to Excel 2007 to see how we can use this cube to create a
Pivot Table. If we go back to the specified directory, we will see a new file with a .cub extension having
been created by Excel. Thats the cube !

How to use an OLAP Cube in Excel to make a Pivot Table

Open up an Excel spreadsheet and click on the Pivot Table tab from the ribbon.

Choose to Use an external data source and then use the Browse for more button to locate the .cub file
that we created in the previous step.
The form picks up the OLAP cube as the data source and shows the connection name.
Press ok and viola ! We are presented with a Pivot Table thats based out of the OLAP Cube.

Checking out if a Pivot Table is based on an OLAP Cube

Heres how you can check if a Pivot table is based on an OLAP Cube:

1 Using VBA
2 Sub check_OLAP()
3 Dim pvt As PivotTable
4 Set pvt = ActiveSheet.PivotTables(1)
5 MsgBox "Pivot Table uses OLAP Cube " & pvt.PivotCache.OLAP
6 End Sub