Yeah, But

Because they operate more directly on relational databases without requiring a separate multidimensional database for on-line analytical processing (OLAP), relational OLAP (ROLAP) products, such as Informix Software's Metacube, can manage much larger data volumes for applications. By acting directly on relational data, ROLAP products eliminate the data duplication that's required with multidimensional products.

Yeah, but ROLAP products often need to store precomputed results, or summary tables, to achieve acc eptable performance. These summary tables also duplicate data.

Many analysis applications involve simple sales- and production-analysis applications that are easily handled by ROLAP tools, which employ the SQL programming language to retrieve the needed data.

Yeah, but for complex applications, such as forecasting, what-if analysis, and ratio comparisons, a multidimensional database is a better solution.