OLAP systems are designed to support which type of data analysis?

• A. Transactional Processing
• B. Multidimensional Analysis and Aggregation
• C. Real-Time Streaming
• D. Text Search

Answer: (B)

Multidimensional analysis and aggregation across multiple data dimensions is what OLAP is designed to support. It lets analysts explore data by slices and dices across dimensions like time, product, and location, and perform drill-down, roll-up, and pivot operations to view both detailed and summarized results quickly. Data is organized into cubes or star schemas with precomputed aggregates to speed up complex queries, enabling rapid insights from large data sets. This focus on analyzing across dimensions and rapidly computing aggregates differentiates OLAP from transactional processing, real-time streaming, or text search, which are not its primary purpose.