title: Why use ROLAP instead of plain MySQL?
body: <p>Are there any performance advantages in using a ROLAP server such as Mondrian on top of a MySQL database, as opposed to simply querying the MySQL database?</p>
  
  <p>I am asking this in the context in which most of my queries will be relatively simple (such as finding all the sales in a certain period), but the size of the database is rather large (hundreds of thousands of entries). </p>
  
  <p>My idea was to use OLAP to speed up queries, but now I'm confused as to whether or not this is actually the purpose of this technology, especially in its ROLAP form. While trying the olap4j API, I realized that I can use it to make MDX queries without even having an actual OLAP server (just having a relational database and an OLAP schema for it). How could that be of any use in terms of performance?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks</p>