Editing Online analytical processing (section)

===Comparison===
Each type has certain benefits, although there is disagreement about the specifics of the benefits between providers.

* Some MOLAP implementations are prone to database explosion, a phenomenon causing vast amounts of storage space to be used by MOLAP databases when certain common conditions are met: high number of dimensions, pre-calculated results and sparse multidimensional data.
* MOLAP generally delivers better performance due to specialized indexing and storage optimizations. MOLAP also needs less storage space compared to ROLAP because the specialized storage typically includes [[Data compression|compression]] techniques.<ref name="ieee_cite"/>
* ROLAP is generally more scalable.<ref name="ieee_cite"/> However, large volume pre-processing is difficult to implement efficiently so it is frequently skipped.  ROLAP query performance can therefore suffer tremendously.
* Since ROLAP relies more on the database to perform calculations, it has more limitations in the specialized functions it can use.
* HOLAP attempts to mix the best of ROLAP and MOLAP. It can generally pre-process swiftly, scale well, and offer good function support.