OLAP, Data Warehouse, Data Mart, Three-tier, and ASP

OLAP, Data Warehouse, Data Mart, Three-tier, and ASP all have one thing in common. They all deal with databases and how the data is accessed.

OLAP is short for Online Analytical Processing, a category of software tools that provides analysis of data stored in a database. OLAP tools enable users to analyze different dimensions of multidimensional data. For example, it provides time series and trend analysis views. OLAP often is used in data mining.

The chief component of OLAP is the OLAP server, which sits between a client and a database management system (DBMS). The OLAP server understands how data is organized in the database and has special functions for analyzing the data. There are OLAP servers available for nearly all the major database systems.

Data Warehouse (abbreviated DW) is a collection of data designed to support management decision making. Data warehouses contain a wide variety of data that present a coherent picture of business conditions at a single point in time.

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Development of a data warehouse includes development of systems to extract data from operating systems plus installation of a warehouse database system that provides managers flexible access to the data. The term data warehousing generally refers to the combination of many different databases across an entire enterprise.

Data Mart is a database, or collection of databases, designed to help managers make strategic decisions about their business. Whereas a data warehouse combines databases across an entire enterprise, data marts are usually smaller and focus on a particular subject or department. Some data marts, called dependent data marts, are subsets of larger data warehouses.

Three-tier architecture is a special type of client/server architecture consisting of three well-defined and separate processes, each running on a different platform. The first is the user interface, which runs on the user's computer...