Performing ordered analytical computations at the SQL level rather than through a higher-level OLAP calculation engine provides four distinct advantages.
- Reduced programming effort.
- Elimination of the need for external sort routines.
- Elimination of the need to export large data sets to external tools because ordered analytical functions enable you to target the specific data for analysis within the warehouse itself by specifying conditions in the query.
- Marked enhancement of analysis performance over the slow, single-threaded operations that external tools perform on large data sets.