[aaronblohowiak]

You should not be doing analysis (OLAP) on your main transactional database (OLTP). Moving from transaction-processing system (TPS) to analysis is done through a process call ETL (Extract, Transform, Load.) You will want to transform your data into facts and dimensions -- this is going from a relational model to a multidemensional model (using a star schema.)

[lubos]

but that would be another system to maintain. I'm happy to outsource this to MixPanel or some other company. My needs are pretty generic. I appreciate your response though.

[aaronblohowiak]

Yes, I 100% believe in focusing on your core competencies. If the OLAP is self-hosted or external, the key takeaway is to not do analysis against production (once your data set is larger than RAM ;) before that, who cares?)