The term Online Analytic Processing (OLAP) was coined about ten years ago to contrast with Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) to distinguish between systems designed to enable high summary reporting of data (and enable analysis) and those designed to store low level data (typically transactional).  The basic technologies were already in existence, only the name metamorphosed from the earlier Decision Support Systems (DSS) through Executive Information Systems (EIS) or Enterprise Information Systems as the ability to drill deeper down into the data became more available.

Business Intelligence (or BI) is simply the latest name for the ability to perform high level analyses in order to search for trends and understand sets of data more fully (usually though graphical displays).

Typically the underlying data is stored as a "multidimensional cube", any face of which can be viewed by the user.  Each face contains data which may be drawn either as a table or graph in the same way as a spreadsheet, but a simple drag-and-drop interface is provided to view other "faces".

Matraxis consultants have been working to provide similar applications using a variety of tools since the mid 1980's and were attracted to Databeacon both by the ease with which it collates the underlying data from the legacy transactional systems or spreadsheets and the simple yet powerful front end tool enabling users to navigate around the data and find create their own reports of what is important to them.