The Case for Mobile OLAP

On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) is a trend in database technology, based on the multidimensional view of data. Numerous applications and development environments exist, offering OLAP analysis to developers, analysts and end users. Further more, mobile devices find their way into almost all aspects of every day life, ranging from cellular phones with advanced capabilities (smart phones) for personal use to professional PDA’s used for numerous wireless applications – OLAP included – and thus generating the need for convergence of the two technologies. In this paper we introduce the term Mobile OLAP to express the porting of requirements and specifications for OLAP applications into the wireless and mobile computing world. More specifically, we examine the requirements posed for OLAP visualization applications on mobile devices, both in terms of presentation and usability. We then proceed by investigating the state of the art of the broader wireless computing community, focusing in the specifications more close to OLAP. Finally, we demonstrate how a “lightweight” presentation model for OLAP can significantly contribute towards mobile OLAP.