The term data cube originally was used in Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) of business and statistics data. Technically speaking, such a data cube represents a multidimensional array together with metadata describing the semantics of axes, coordinates, and cells. It is an efficient approach to the management and analysis of large datasets.
In data manipulation contexts, a data cube is a multi-dimensional array of values. A data cube can be visualized as the multidimensional extension of two-dimensional table. It can be viewed as a collection of identical 2-D tables stacked upon one another. Data cubes are used to represent data that is too complex to be described by a traditional table of columns and rows. Typically, the data cube is applied in conditions where these arrays are massively larger than the hosting computer’s main memory, for example multi-terabyte data warehouses o time series of image data.