In SQL Server Business Intelligence, why would I create a report model from an OLAP cube?

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Published on 2010-04-01T15:10:31Z Indexed on 2010/04/01 15:13 UTC
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In Business Intelligence Developer Studio, I'm wondering why one would want to create a report model from an OLAP cube.

As far as I understand it, OLAP cubes and report models are both business-oriented views of underlying structures (usually relational databases) that may not mean much to a business user. The cube is a multidimensional view in terms of dimensions and measures, and the report model is... well I'm not sure entirely -- is it a more business-oriented, but still essentially relational view?

Anyway, in Report Builder I can connect directly to both an OLAP cube or a report model. So I don't see why, if I have an OLAP cube which already provides a business-oriented view of the data suitable for end-users, why I would then convert that to a report model and use that in Report Builder instead.

I think I'm obviously missing some fundamental difference between report models and cubes -- any help appreciated!

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