Etl, OLAP and Trends • Easily Understood Technology

Most of the users or customers working on OLAP technology come from a

background of less to minimum technology skills. They mostly do not need any
unique training to use this technology, which in return helps the company save
some money. Moreover, OLAP technology providers provide their end users with
enough tutorial, documents and some start off technical assistance particularly in
case of web – based OLAP operations. The end customers are given sessions to
continuously work with a group of technical experts so that they do not have to
solve all the OLAP issues by themselves.

5.10 OLAP ARCHITECTURE: MOLAP, ROLAP, HOLAP

AND DOLAP
There are types of OLAP architecture: ROLAP, MOLAP, HOLAP and others as
shown in the below figure 9.

Figure 9: Types of OLAP Architecture

ROLAP Architecture
ROLAP implies Relational OLAP, an application based on relational DBMSs. It
performs dynamic multidimensional analysis of data stored in a relational database.
The architecture is like three-tiered. It has three components viz. front end (User
Interface), ROLAP server (Metadata request processing engine) and the back end
(Database Server) as shown in the Figure 10.
yy Database server
yy ROLAP server
yy Front-end tool
In this three-tiered architecture the user submits the request and ROLAP engine
converts the request into SQL and submits to the backend database. After the
processing of request the engine, it presents the resulting data into multidimensional
format to make the task easier for the client to view it.

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 Introduction to Online
Analytical Processing

Figure 10 : ROLAP Architechture

The characteristics of ROLAP are:

yy ROLAP utilizes the more processing time and disk space.
yy ROLAP enables and supports larger user group in the distributed
environment.
yy ROLAP processes complex queries utilizing the greater amounts of data.
Popular ROLAP products include Metacube by Stanford Technology Group, Red
Brick Warehouse by Red Brick Systems.
MOLAP Architecture
MOLAP it stands for Multidimensional Online Analytical Processing. It processes
the data using the multidimensional cube using various combinations. Since, the
data is stored in multidimensional structure the MOLAP engine uses the pre-
computed or pre-stored and stored. The architecture has three components:
yy Database server
yy MOLAP server
yy Front-end tool
MOLAP engine processes pre-compiled information. It has dynamic abilities to
perform aggregation of concept hierarchy. MOLAP is very useful in time-series
data analysis and economic evaluation. MOLAP in shown in Figure 11.

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Figure 11 : MOLAP Architechture (Source : internet)
Etl, OLAP and Trends The characteristics of MOLAP are:
yy It is a user-friendly architecture, easy to use.
yy The OLAP operations slice and dice speeds up the data retrieval.
yy It has small pre-computed hypercubes.
Tools that incorporate MOLAP include Oracle Essbase, IBM Cognos, and Apache
Kylin.
HOLAP Architecture
It defines Hybrid Online Analytical Processing. It is the hybrid of ROLAP and
MOLAP technologies. It connect both the dimensions together in one architecture.
It stores the intermediate or part of the data in ROLAP and MOLAP. Depending on
the query request it accesses the databases. It stores the relational tables in ROLAP
structure, and the data requires multidimensional view are stored and processed
using MOLAP architecture as shown in figure 12. It has the following components:
yy Database server
yy ROLAP and MOLAP server
yy Front-end tool

Figure 12 : HOLAP architecture( source: internet)

The characteristics of HOLAP are:

yy Flexible handling of data.
yy Faster aggregation of data.
yy HOLAP can drill down the hierarchy of data and can access to relational
database for any relevant and stored information in it.
Popular HOLAP products are Microsoft SQL Server 2000 presents a hybrid OLAP
server.
DOLAP Architecture
Desktop Online Analytical Processing (DOLAP) architecture is most suitable for
local multidimensional analysis. It is like a miniature of multidimensional database
84 or it’s like a sub cube or any business data cube. The components are:
yy Database Server Introduction to Online
Analytical Processing
yy DOLAP server
yy Front End
The characteristics of DOLAP are:
yy The three-tiered architecture is designed for low-end, standalone user like a
small shop owner in the locality.
yy The data cube is locally stored in the system so, retrieval of results is faster.
yy No load on the backend or at the server end.
yy DOLAP is relatively cheaper to deploy.
 Check Your Progress 3
1) Compare ROLAP, MOLAP and HOLAP.
……………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………...
2) Write limitations of OLAP cube.
……………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………...

5.11 SUMMARY
OLAP has proven to be an asset in the field of Business Intelligence as it helps in
relieving the large amount of data handling along adding the cost benefits of working
with this very technique. Furthermore, OLAP providers normally offer their clients
with significant documentation, tutorials, and spark off technical assistance in terms
of web-primarily based totally OLAP clients. The customers are continuously loose
to deal with the group of tech experts while not having to control all the troubles
tied to the software program themselves. The concept hierarchies help to organize
the dimensions into logical levels. The various OLAP operations help to extract
information across sub cubes. The creation of cube and types of OLAPs helps to
understand the architecture and usage of various applications of OLAP.

5.12 SOLUTIONS/ANSWERS
Check Your Progress 1
1) Knowledge workers such as data analysts, business analysts, and Executives
are the users of OLAP.
2) Decision making Tool features are:
• Report Generation
• Query Handling
• EIS (Executive Information System)
• OLAP (Online Analytical Processing)
• Data Mining
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Etl, OLAP and Trends
Check Your Progress 2
1) In Marketing, OLAP can be used for various purposes as it helps like planning,
budgeting, Financial marketing, sales data analysis and forecasting. The
customer experience is very important to all the companies. So, OLAP
works very efficiently in analyzing the data of customers, market research
analysis, cost-benefit analysis of any project considering all the dimensions.
There are various OLAP tools available. The OLAP tool should have the
ability to analyze large amounts of data, data analysis, fast response to the
queries and data visualization. For example, IBM Cognos is a very powerful
OLAP marketing tool.
2) Purpose of Hypercube in OLAP: The cube is basically used to represent
data with some meaningful measure to compute. Hypercube logically has
all the data at one place as a single unit or spreadsheet which makes the
computation of queries faster. Each dimension logically belongs to one cube.
For example, a multidimensional cube contains data of the cities of India,
Product, Sales and Time with conceptual hierarchy (Delhi→2018→Sales).
As, shown in below figures.

Figure 13: Multidimensional Cube

In the cube given in the overview section, a sub-cube(hypercube) is selected with

the following conditions
Location = “Delhi” or “Kolkata” Time = “Q1” or “Q2” , Item = “Car” or “Bus”

Figure 14 : Hypercube or sub-cube

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Slice is performed on the dimension Time = “Q1”. Introduction to Online
Analytical Processing

Figure 15 : Slice on Hyper cube

In the sub-cube ,pivot operation is performed.

Figure 16: Pivot operation

3) Features of OLAP are:

• Conceptual multidimensional view
• Accessibility of data
• Efficient and flexible Reporting system
• Client/Server architecture
• Supports unrestricted dimensions and aggregation levels
• Uses dynamic sparse matrix handling for faster query results
• Multiuser support
Check Your Progress 3
1) Comparative analysis between ROLAP, MOLAP and HOLAP
Features ROLAP MOLAP HOLAP
Accessibility Very slow because Fast because of Fast
of data an and of join operation multidimensional
Processing time between tables. storage. The data
The data is is fetched from
fetched from data multidimensional
warehouse. data cube.
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Etl, OLAP and Trends
Features ROLAP MOLAP HOLAP
Storage space Data is stored in Data is stored inIt uses both
requirement relational tables. multidimensional ROLAP,
Comparatively tables. Medium MOLAP. Small
Large storage storage space storage space
space requirement requirements requirements. No
duplicate of data
Latency Low latency High latency Medium latency
Query response Slow query Fast query Medium query
time response time response time. response time
Volume of data Used for large Limited volume of Can be used in
volumes of data data both scenarios
Retreival of data Complex SQL Sparse Matrix is Both
queries are used used
Data View Static view of data Dynamic view of Both static and
data dynamic view of
data
2) Limitations of OLAP cube are:
• OLAP requires a star/snowflake schema:
• There is a limited number of dimensions (fields) a single OLAP
cube.
• I t is nearly impossible to access transactional data in the OLAP
cube.
•  hanges to an OLAP cube requires a full update of the cube – a
C
lengthy process.

5.13 FURTHER READINGS

yy William H. Inmon, Building the Data Warehouse, Wiley, 4th Edition, 2005.
yy Data Warehousing Fundamentals, Paulraj Ponnaiah, Wiley Student Edition
yy Data Warehousing, Reema Thareja, Oxford University Press
yy Data Warehousing, Data Mining & OLAP, Alex Berson and Stephen
J.Smith, Tata McGraw – Hill Edition, 2016.

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