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OLAP

OLAP notes for DWDM and BDA

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Shruti Jatain
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18 views8 pages

OLAP

OLAP notes for DWDM and BDA

Uploaded by

Shruti Jatain
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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OLAP

OLAP stands for Online Analytical Processing.


It uses database tables (fact and dimension tables) to enable multidimensional


viewing, analysis and querying of large amounts of data.

E.g. OLAP technology could provide management with fast answers to complex
queries on their operational data or enable them to analyze their company’s
historical data for trends and patterns.

Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) applications and tools are those that are
designed to ask ―complex queries of large multidimensional collections of data.‖
Due to that OLAP is accompanied with data warehousing.

Need

The key driver of OLAP is the multidimensional nature of the business problem.

These problems are characterized by retrieving a very large number of records that
can reach gigabytes and terabytes and summarizing this data into a form
information that can by used by business analysts.
One of the limitations that SQL has, it cannot represent these complex problems.

A query will be translated in to several SQL statements. These SQL statements will
involve multiple joins, intermediate tables, sorting, aggregations and a huge
temporary memory to store these tables.

These procedures required a lot of computation which will require a long time in
computing.

The second limitation of SQL is its inability to use mathematical models in these
SQL statements. If an analyst, could create these complex statements using SQL
statements, still there will be a large number of computation and huge memory
needed.
Therefore the use of OLAP is preferable to solve this kind of problem.

Online Analytical Processing Server (OLAP) is based on the multidimensional data


model. It allows managers, and analysts to get an insight of the information through fast,
consistent, and interactive access to information. This chapter cover the types of OLAP,
operations on OLAP, difference between OLAP, and statistical databases and OLTP.

Types of OLAP Servers


We have four types of OLAP servers −

• Relational OLAP (ROLAP)


• Multidimensional OLAP (MOLAP)
• Hybrid OLAP (HOLAP)

Relational OLAP
ROLAP servers are placed between relational back-end server and client front-end tools.
To store and manage warehouse data, ROLAP uses relational or extended-relational
DBMS.
ROLAP includes the following −

• Implementation of aggregation navigation logic.


• Optimization for each DBMS back end.
• Additional tools and services.

Multidimensional OLAP
MOLAP uses array-based multidimensional storage engines for multidimensional views
of data. With multidimensional data stores, the storage utilization may be low if the data
set is sparse. Therefore, many MOLAP server use two levels of data storage
representation to handle dense and sparse data sets.

Hybrid OLAP
Hybrid OLAP is a combination of both ROLAP and MOLAP. It offers higher scalability of
ROLAP and faster computation of MOLAP. HOLAP servers allows to store the large data
volumes of detailed information. The aggregations are stored separately in MOLAP
store.

OLAP Operations
Since OLAP servers are based on multidimensional view of data, we will discuss OLAP
operations in multidimensional data.
Here is the list of OLAP operations −

• Roll-up
• Drill-down
• Slice and dice
• Pivot (rotate)

Roll-up
Roll-up performs aggregation on a data cube in any of the following ways −

• By climbing up a concept hierarchy for a dimension


• By dimension reduction
The following diagram illustrates how roll-up works.
• Roll-up is performed by climbing up a concept hierarchy for the dimension location.
• Initially the concept hierarchy was "street < city < province < country".
• On rolling up, the data is aggregated by ascending the location hierarchy from the
level of city to the level of country.
• The data is grouped into cities rather than countries.
• When roll-up is performed, one or more dimensions from the data cube are
removed.
Drill-down
Drill-down is the reverse operation of roll-up. It is performed by either of the following
ways −

• By stepping down a concept hierarchy for a dimension


• By introducing a new dimension.
The following diagram illustrates how drill-down works −
• Drill-down is performed by stepping down a concept hierarchy for the dimension
time.
• Initially the concept hierarchy was "day < month < quarter < year."
• On drilling down, the time dimension is descended from the level of quarter to the
level of month.
• When drill-down is performed, one or more dimensions from the data cube are
added.
• It navigates the data from less detailed data to highly detailed data.
Slice
The slice operation selects one particular dimension from a given cube and provides a
new sub-cube. Consider the following diagram that shows how slice works.
• Here Slice is performed for the dimension "time" using the criterion time = "Q1".
• It will form a new sub-cube by selecting one or more dimensions.
Dice
Dice selects two or more dimensions from a given cube and provides a new sub-cube.
Consider the following diagram that shows the dice operation.
The dice operation on the cube based on the following selection criteria involves three
dimensions.

• (location = "Toronto" or "Vancouver")


• (time = "Q1" or "Q2")
• (item =" Mobile" or "Modem")

Pivot
The pivot operation is also known as rotation. It rotates the data axes in view in order to
provide an alternative presentation of data. Consider the following diagram that shows
the pivot operation.

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