Data Warehousing:
and OLAP
—MIS 542—
— Chapter 4 —
Spring
2004
1
Chapter 2: Data Warehousing and
OLAP Technology for Data Mining

What is a data warehouse?

A multi-dimensional data model

Data warehouse architecture

Data warehouse implementation

Further development of data cube technology

From data warehousing to data mining
2
What is Data Warehouse?



Defined in many different ways, but not rigorously.
 A decision support database that is maintained
separately from the organization’s operational
database
 Support information processing by providing a solid
platform of consolidated, historical data for analysis.
“A data warehouse is a subject-oriented, integrated,
time-variant, and nonvolatile collection of data in support
of management’s decision-making process.”—W. H.
Inmon
Data warehousing:
 The process of constructing and using data
warehouses
3
Data Warehouse—Subject-Oriented

Organized around major subjects, such as customer,
product, sales.

Focusing on the modeling and analysis of data for
decision makers, not on daily operations or transaction
processing.

Provide a simple and concise view around particular
subject issues by excluding data that are not useful in
the decision support process.
4
Data Warehouse—Integrated


Constructed by integrating multiple, heterogeneous
data sources
 relational databases, flat files, on-line transaction
records
Data cleaning and data integration techniques are
applied.
 Ensure consistency in naming conventions, encoding
structures, attribute measures, etc. among different
data sources


E.g., Hotel price: currency, tax, breakfast covered, etc.
When data is moved to the warehouse, it is
converted.
5
Data Warehouse—Time Variant

The time horizon for the data warehouse is significantly
longer than that of operational systems.



Operational database: current value data.
Data warehouse data: provide information from a
historical perspective (e.g., past 5-10 years)
Every key structure in the data warehouse


Contains an element of time, explicitly or implicitly
But the key of operational data may or may not
contain “time element”.
6
Data Warehouse—Non-Volatile

A physically separate store of data transformed from the
operational environment.

Operational update of data does not occur in the data
warehouse environment.

Does not require transaction processing, recovery,
and concurrency control mechanisms

Requires only two operations in data accessing:

initial loading of data and access of data.
7
Data Warehouse vs. Heterogeneous DBMS

Traditional heterogeneous DB integration:

Build wrappers/mediators on top of heterogeneous databases

Query driven approach



When a query is posed to a client site, a meta-dictionary is
used to translate the query into queries appropriate for
individual heterogeneous sites involved, and the results are
integrated into a global answer set
Complex information filtering, compete for resources
Data warehouse: update-driven, high performance

Information from heterogeneous sources is integrated in advance
and stored in warehouses for direct query and analysis
8
Data Warehouse vs. Operational DBMS

OLTP (on-line transaction processing)




Major task of traditional relational DBMS
Day-to-day operations: purchasing, inventory, banking,
manufacturing, payroll, registration, accounting, etc.
OLAP (on-line analytical processing)

Major task of data warehouse system

Data analysis and decision making
Distinct features (OLTP vs. OLAP):

User and system orientation: customer vs. market

Data contents: current, detailed vs. historical, consolidated

Database design: ER + application vs. star + subject

View: current, local vs. evolutionary, integrated

Access patterns: update vs. read-only but complex queries
9
OLTP vs. OLAP
OLTP
OLAP
users
clerk, IT professional
knowledge worker
function
day to day operations
decision support
DB design
application-oriented
subject-oriented
data
current, up-to-date
detailed, flat relational
isolated
repetitive
historical,
summarized, multidimensional
integrated, consolidated
ad-hoc
lots of scans
unit of work
read/write
index/hash on prim. key
short, simple transaction
# records accessed
tens
millions
#users
thousands
hundreds
DB size
100MB-GB
100GB-TB
metric
transaction throughput
query throughput, response
usage
access
complex query
10
Why Separate Data Warehouse?


High performance for both systems
 DBMS— tuned for OLTP: access methods, indexing,
concurrency control, recovery
 Warehouse—tuned for OLAP: complex OLAP queries,
multidimensional view, consolidation.
Different functions and different data:
 missing data: Decision support requires historical data
which operational DBs do not typically maintain
 data consolidation: DS requires consolidation
(aggregation, summarization) of data from
heterogeneous sources
 data quality: different sources typically use inconsistent
data representations, codes and formats which have to
be reconciled
11
Chapter 2: Data Warehousing and
OLAP Technology for Data Mining

What is a data warehouse?

A multi-dimensional data model

Data warehouse architecture

Data warehouse implementation

Further development of data cube technology

From data warehousing to data mining
12
From Tables and Spreadsheets
to Data Cubes


A data warehouse is based on a multidimensional data model which
views data in the form of a data cube
A data cube, such as sales, allows data to be modeled and viewed
in multiple dimensions
 Dimensions

A sale data warehouse with respect to dimension


Dimension tables, such as



item (item_name, brand, type), or
time(day, week, month, quarter, year)
Facts: numerical measures



time, item, branch, location
dollars_sold: sales amount in dollars
units_sold: number of units sold
Fact table contains measures (such as dollars_sold) and keys to
each of the related dimension tables
13
A 2-D data cube: A table or spreadsheet
for sales from AllElectronics
AllElectronics sales data for items sold per
quarter in the city of Istanbul
time
Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4
location = Istanbul
item (type)
ent
comp
605
825
680
952
812
1023
927
1038
phone
14
31
30
38
Time dimension organized in quarters
item dimension by types of items sold
The fact or measure is dollar_sold
14
A three dimensional cube
Dimensions: time, item, location for the cities
location = Istanbul
item (type)
time ent comp phone
Q1 605 825 14
Q2 680 952 31
Q3 812 1023 30
Q4 927 1038 38
location = Ankara
item (type)
time ent comp phone
Q1 1087 968 38
Q2 1130 1024 41
Q3 1034 1048 45
Q4 1142 1091 54
location = Izmir
item (type)
time ent comp phone
Q1 854 882 89
Q2 943 890 64
Q3 1032 924 59
Q4 1129 992 63
15
A Data Cube Representation of the
same data

Sales volume as a function of product, month,
Dimensions: Product, Location, Time
and region
Hierarchical summarization paths
izmir
ankara
items
istabbul
phon
comp
Q1
Quarters
16
A 4-D Cube as a series of 3-D cubes
Dimensions: item,time,location,supplier
From
Supplier B
From
Supplier C
items
From
Supplier A
Quarters
17
n-Dimensional Cube






Any n-D data as a series of (n-1)-D “cubes”
In data warehousing literature,
A data cube is referred to as a cuboid
The lattice of cuboids forms a data cube.
The cuboid holding the lowest level of summarization is
called a base cuboid.
 the 4-D cuboid is the base cuboid for the given four
dimensions
The top most 0-D cuboid, which holds the highest-level
of summarization, is called the apex cuboid.
 Here this is the total sales, or dollars_sold
summarized over all four dimensions
 typically denoted by all
18
Cube: A Lattice of Cuboids
all
time
time,item
0-D(apex) cuboid
item
time,location
location
item,location
time,supplier
time,item,location
supplier
1-D cuboids
location,supplier
2-D cuboids
item,supplier
time,location,supplier
3-D cuboids
time,item,supplier
item,location,supplier
4-D(base) cuboid
time, item, location, supplier
19
Conceptual Modeling of
Data Warehouses

Modeling data warehouses: dimensions & measures

Star schema: A fact table in the middle connected to a
set of dimension tables

Snowflake schema: A refinement of star schema
where some dimensional hierarchy is normalized into a
set of smaller dimension tables, forming a shape
similar to snowflake

Fact constellations: Multiple fact tables share
dimension tables, viewed as a collection of stars,
therefore called galaxy schema or fact constellation
20
Example of Star Schema
time
item
time_key
day
day_of_the_week
month
quarter
year
Sales Fact Table
time_key
item_key
branch_key
branch
location_key
branch_key
branch_name
branch_type
units_sold
dollars_sold
avg_sales
item_key
item_name
brand
type
supplier_type
location
location_key
street
city
province_or_street
country
Measures
21
Sales Fact Table
Time_keu Prod_key Loca_key branch_keyunit_sales $L_sales $_cost
1
2
2
1
20
100000
5000
4
6
17
8
30
600
20
6
12
4
77
25
5000
200
Time Table
Time_ke
day
day_week month
6 Cumartesi
6 Ocak
4 Persembe
4 Ocak
15 Pazartesi
1 Ocak
Product Table
Prod_key Prod namebrand
12 Hpyazici HP
6 IBM Bilgis IBM PC
season
Q1
Q1
Q1
year
2003
2003
2003
type
supplier
HP3225
Hp baiyi
IBM PC 2GIBM temsil
22
Example of Snowflake Schema
time
time_key
day
day_of_the_week
month
quarter
year
item
Sales Fact Table
time_key
item_key
branch_key
branch
location_key
branch_key
branch_name
branch_type
units_sold
dollars_sold
avg_sales
Measures
item_key
item_name
brand
type
supplier_key
supplier
supplier_key
supplier_type
location
location_key
street
city_key
city
city_key
city
province_or_street
country
23
A unnormalized City Table
laca_key steet
city
1 HalGazi Istanbul
2 Nisbetiye Istanbul
3 BuyukdereIstanbul
4 AtaturkBul Ankara
province
Marmara
Marmara
Marmara
IcAnadolu
country
Turkiye
Turkiye
Turkiye
Turkiye
City province and
Country is repeated
For every steet in
İstanbul
A Normalized City Table
loca_key steet
city_key
1 HalGazi
1
2 Nisbetiye
1
3 Buyukdere
1
4 AtaturkBul
2
city_key province country
1 Marmara Turkiye
2 icanadolu Turkiye
Unnecessary repitations of province end country are eliminated
Memory gain but complex queries
24
Example of Fact Constellation
time
time_key
day
day_of_the_week
month
quarter
year
item
Sales Fact Table
time_key
item_key
item_name
brand
type
supplier_type
item_key
location_key
branch_key
branch_name
branch_type
units_sold
dollars_sold
avg_sales
Measures
time_key
item_key
shipper_key
from_location
branch_key
branch
Shipping Fact Table
location
to_location
location_key
street
city
province_or_street
country
dollars_cost
units_shipped
shipper
shipper_key
shipper_name
location_key
shipper_type 25
Measures: Three Categories


A multidimensional point in the data cube space

dimension-value pairs:

(time=“Q1”,location=“Istanbul”,item=“computer”)
A data cube measure is a numerical function that can be
evaluated at each point in the data cube space

computed for a given point by aggregating the data
corresponding to the respective dimension-value pairs
defining the given point
26
Measures: Three Categories

distributive:

Suppose the data D is partitioned into n sets Di i =1,..n




the computation of the function f on each partition
derives one aggregate value
Ai =f(Di) i = 1,..,n, f(D)=f(A1,A2,..,An)
if the result derived by applying the function to n
aggregate values is the same as that derived by applying
the function on all the data without partitioning.
The function can be computed in a distributed manner

E.g., count(), sum(), min(), max().
27
Example: Sum()






Data set: D:{1,3,6,8,9}
Sum(D) = 27
Partition the set into D1 end D2 as
D1:{1,3,6), D2:{8.9}
Sum(D1) = 10, Sum(D2) = 17
Sum(sum(D1),sum(D2)) = sum(10,17) =27
=sum(D)
28
Measures: Three Categories

algebraic: if it can be computed by an algebraic function
with M arguments (where M is a bounded integer), each
of which is obtained by applying a distributive aggregate
function.


E.g., avg(), min_N(), standard_deviation().

E.g.,avg() = sum()/count()

both sum() and count() are distributive agg. Functions
Show that

min_N(), standard_deviation().
29
Measures: Three Categories


holistic: if there is no constant bound on the storage size
needed to describe a subaggregate.
There is no an algebric function with M arguments(M
being bounded) that characterizes the computation

E.g., median(), mode(), rank().
30
Example

The relational database scheme for AE:





time(time_key,day,day_of_week,month,quarter,year)
item(item_key,item_name,brand,type,supplier_type)
branch(branch_key,branch_name,branch_type)
location(location_key,street,city,province_or_state,coun
try)
sales(time_key,item_key,branch_key,location_key,num
ber_of_units_sold,price)
31
Example cont.




Select
s.time_key,s.item_key,s.branch_key,s.location_key,
 sum(s.number_of_units_sold*s.price),
 sum(s.number_of_units_sold)
from time t, item i,branch b,location l,sales s,
where s.time_key=t.time_key and
 s.item_key=i.item_key and
 s.branch_key=b.branch_key and
 s.location_key=l.location_key
group by s.time_key, s.item_key,
s.branch_key,s.location_key
32
Example Cont.



The cube created is the base cuboid of the
sales_star datacube
 it contains all of the dimensions
 granularity of each is at the join key level
by changing the group by clauses
E.g.,
 group by t.month: sum up the measures of
each group by month
 removing group by s.branch_key: generate a
higher-level cuboid
33
Time by month




Select
t.year,t.month,s.item_key,s.branch_key,s.location_key,s
um(s.number_of_units_sold*s.price),sum(s.number_of_
units_sold)
from time t, item i,branch b,location l,sales s,
where s.time_key=t.time_key and
 s.item_key=i.item_key and
 s.branch_key=b.branch_key and
 s.location_key=l.location_key
group by t.year, t.month, s.item_key,
s.branch_key,s.location_key
34
A three dimensional cuboid




Select s.time_key,s.item_key, s.location_key,
 sum(s.number_of_units_sold*s.price),
 sum(s.number_of_units_sold)
from time t, item i,branch b,location l,sales s,
where s.time_key=t.time_key and
 s.item_key=i.item_key and
 s.branch_key=b.branch_key and
 s.location_key=l.location_key
group by s.time_key, s.item_key,s.location_key
35
Concept hierarchies


Defines a sequence of mappings from a set of low-level
concepts to high-level more general concepts
E.g., dimension location is described by
 number,street,city,province_or_state,zipcode and
country
 are related by a total order, forming a concept
hierarchy


street<city<province_or_state<country
The attributes of a dimension may be organized in a
partial order, forming a lattice
 day,week,month,quarter, year
 day<[month<quarter,week]<year
36
A Concept Hierarchy: Dimension (location)
all
all
Europe
region
country
city
office
Germany
Frankfurt
...
...
...
Spain
North_America
Canada
Vancouver ...
L. Chan
...
...
Mexico
Toronto
M. Wind
37
Partially ordered co


The attributes of a dimension may be organized
in a partial order, forming a lattice
 day,week,month,quarter, year
 day<[month<quarter,week]<year
predefined in the data mining system
 time


fiscal year starting on April 1
academic year starting on September 1
38
Multidimensional Data

Sales volume as a function of product, month,
and region
Dimensions: Product, Location, Time
Hierarchical summarization paths
Industry Region
Year
Product
Category Country Quarter
Product
City
Office
Month
Month Week
Day
A partially ordered hierarchy
39
Cuboids Corresponding to the Cube
all
0-D(apex) cuboid
item
item,time
time
item,location
location
1-D cuboids
time, location
2-D cuboids
3-D(base) cuboid
item, time, location
40
Set grouping hierarchy



Set-grouping hierarchy:
discretizing or grouping values for a given
dimension or attribute
 Ex: price
There may be more than one concept hierarchy
for a given attribute or dimension based on
different user viewpoints
 price by defining ranges for

inexpensive, moderately_priced,expensive
41
How defined?


provided by manually by
 system users
 domain experts
 knowledge engineers or
automatically generated based on statistical
analysis of the data distribution
42
Typical OLAP Operations



In the multidimensional model data are
organized into multiple dimensions
each dimension contains multiple levels of
abstraction defined by concept hierarchies
This organization provides users with the
flexibility to view data from different
perspectives
43
Example



Refer to figure 2.10 in Han’s book
data cube for AllElls sales
 dimensions: location,time,item
 location -- city
 time -- quarters
 item -- item types
measure displayed is dollars-sold
44
Cuboids Corresponding to the Cube
all
0-D(apex) cuboid
item
item,time
time
item,location
location
1-D cuboids
time, location
2-D cuboids
3-D(base) cuboid
item, time, location
45
Roll-up (drill-up)

Climbing up a concept hierarchy for a dimension or

by dimension reduction

Ex:roll-up operation aggregates data by ascending the
location hierarchy

from the level of city

to the level of country

rather than grouping the data by city,the cubes

groups the data by country
46
By a drill up opperation examine sales
By country rather than city level
PC
Printer
location by city
roll up
Istanbul Ankara Berlin
Münih
PC
20
30
50
40
Printer
15
5
10
20
location y country
Türkiyy Almanya
50
90
20
30
47

when performed by dimension reduction


one or more dimensions are removed from the cube
Ex a sales cube with location and time

roll-up may remove the time dimension

aggregation of total sales by location

PC
Printer
rather than by location and by time
location by country
Türkiye Almanya
50
90
20
30
Two dimensional cuboid
PC
Printer
locat All
140
50
One dim. cuboid
48
Drill-down (roll-down)

reverse of roll-up




navigates from less detailed data to more detailed data
from higher level summary to lower level summary or
detailed data, or

stepping down a concept hierarchy for a dimension

introducing new dimensions
Ex: drill-down for time

day<month<quarter<year

form the level of quarter

to the more detailed level of month
Adding a new dimension to the data
49
measure is sales
Time 2002
PC
Printer
50
23
Drill down
2002
Q1
PC
Printer
Q2
10
5
Q3
15
10
Q4
20
5
5
3
50
Slice and dice

Slice: a selection on one dimension of the cube

resulting in subcube



Ex: sale data are selected for dimension time
using time =Q1
dice: defines a subcube by performing a
selection on two or more dimensions
Ex: a dice opp. Based on

location=“toronto” or “vencover” and

time =Q1 or Q2 and

item = “home entertainment” or “computer”
51
measure
PC
Printer
PC
printer
Time 2002
Q1
Q2
10
5
Q3
15
10
sales
Time 2002
Q1
10
5
slice
Q4
20
5
5
3
PC
time2002
Q1
10
dice
52
Pivot (rotate)

Visualization opp. Rotates the data axes in view to
provide an alternative presentation of data

Ex:item and location axes in a 2-D slice are rotated

or transforming a 3-D cube into a series of 2-D planes
53
Other OLAP operations


drill across: involving (across) more than one fact table
drill through: through the bottom level of the cube to its back-end
relational tables (using SQL)

ranking the top N or bottom N items in lists

moving averages

growth rates

interests
54
A Star-Net Query Model




Radial lines from a central point
each line represents a concept hierarchy for a
dimension
each abstraction level is called a footprint
 granularities available for use by OLAP
Ex:figure 2.11
 four radial lines,for concept hierarchies


location,customer,item,time
time line has 4 footprints:

day,month,quarter,year
55
A Star-Net Query Model
Customer Orders
Shipping Method
Customer
CONTRACTS
AIR-EXPRESS
ORDER
TRUCK
PRODUCT LINE
Time
Product
ANNUALY QTRLY
DAILY
PRODUCT ITEM PRODUCT GROUP
CITY
SALES PERSON
COUNTRY
DISTRICT
REGION
Location
Each circle is
called a footprint
DIVISION
Promotion
Organization
56
Chapter 2: Data Warehousing and
OLAP Technology for Data Mining

What is a data warehouse?

A multi-dimensional data model

Data warehouse architecture

Data warehouse implementation

Further development of data cube technology

From data warehousing to data mining
57
Design of a Data Warehouse: A
Business Analysis Framework

Four views regarding the design of a data warehouse

Top-down view


Data source view


exposes the information being captured, stored, and
managed by operational systems
Data warehouse view


allows selection of the relevant information necessary for the
data warehouse
consists of fact tables and dimension tables
Business query view

sees the perspectives of data in the warehouse from the view
of end-user
58
Data Warehouse Design Process



Top-down, bottom-up approaches or a combination of both
 Top-down: Starts with overall design and planning (mature)
 Bottom-up: Starts with experiments and prototypes (rapid)
From software engineering point of view
 Waterfall: structured and systematic analysis at each step before
proceeding to the next
 Spiral: rapid generation of increasingly functional systems, short
turn around time, quick turn around
Typical data warehouse design process
 Choose a business process to model, e.g., orders, invoices, etc.
 Choose the grain (atomic level of data) of the business process
 Choose the dimensions that will apply to each fact table record
 Choose the measure that will populate each fact table record
59
Multi-Tiered Architecture
other
Metadata
sources
Operational
DBs
Extract
Transform
Load
Refresh
Monitor
&
Integrator
Data
Warehouse
OLAP Server
Serve
Analysis
Query
Reports
Data mining
Data Marts
Data Sources
Data Storage
OLAP Engine Front-End Tools
60
Three Data Warehouse Models


Enterprise warehouse
 collects all of the information about subjects spanning
the entire organization
Data Mart
 a subset of corporate-wide data that is of value to a
specific groups of users. Its scope is confined to
specific, selected groups, such as marketing data mart


Independent vs. dependent (directly from warehouse) data mart
Virtual warehouse
 A set of views over operational databases
 Only some of the possible summary views may be
materialized
61
Data Warehouse Development:
A Recommended Approach
Multi-Tier Data
Warehouse
Distributed
Data Marts
Data
Mart
Data
Mart
Model refinement
Enterprise
Data
Warehouse
Model refinement
Define a high-level corporate data model
62
Storage of the cube






Cuboids are referred as aggregations
One factor affecting storage requirements
Sparsity: the amount of empty cells in a cube
The base cuboid is likely to contain many empty
cells
 it is a spares cube or array
the 0 or lower dimensional cuboids are less spares
than the higher dimensional ones
 it is not likely that they contain empty cells
Moving along higher levels for the dimension
hierarchy
 the cuboids becomes less spares or more dense
63
Two dimensional sparse cuboid
PC
01.10.2003
02.10.2003
10
03.10.2003
04.10.2003
4
Prt
CD
DV
1
2
2
One dimensional01.10.2003
Densed cuboid 02.10.2003
03.10.2003
04.10.2003
items
10
1
6
2
64
OLAP Server Architectures
Relational OLAP (ROLAP)






Use relational or extended-relational DBMS to store and manage
warehouse data and OLAP middle ware to support missing pieces
query response is generally slower
low storage requirement
Include optimization of DBMS backend, implementation of
aggregation navigation logic, and additional tools and services
greater scalability
appropriate for large data sets that are infrequently queried
 historical data from less recent previous years
65
Multidimensional OLAP (MOLAP)




Array-based multidimensional storage engine (sparse matrix
techniques)
fast indexing to pre-computed summarized data
a two-level storage representation
 dense subcubes are stored as array structures
 spars subcubes are stored by compression techniques
appropriate for cubes with frequent use and rapid query response
66
Hybrid OLAP (HOLAP)




combines ROLAP and MOLAP benefiting from
 greater scalability of ROLAP
 faster computation of MOLAP
Large volumes of data base cuboid is stored in a relational
database
aggregations are stored as arrays
appropriate for for cubes that requre
 rapid query response for summaries based on a large amount
of base data
67
Efficient Data Cube Computation


Data cube can be viewed as a lattice of cuboids

The bottom-most cuboid is the base cuboid

The top-most cuboid (apex) contains only one cell
Example: A data cube containing

item,city,year as dimensions and

sales_in_$ as measure

typical queries are


compute sum of sales, grouping by item and city

compute sum of sales, grouping by item

compute sum of sales, grouping by city
what is the total number of cuboids or group by s for
68
Cuboids Corresponding to the Cube
all
0-D(apex) cuboid
product
product,date
date
country
product,country
1-D cuboids
date, country
2-D cuboids
3-D(base) cuboid
product, date, country
69
Efficient Data Cube Computation

How many cuboids in an n-dimensional cube with 1
levels?


2n cuboids including the base cuboid
in OLAP compute all or at least some of the cuboids in
advance

fast response time

avoids some redundant computation
70
Number of cuboids

if the cube has many dimensions with multiple level
hierarchies
n
T   (Li 1)
i 1

T is total number of cuboids

Li is the number of levels associated with dimension i


excluding the top level all
as generalizing to all is equivalent to the
removal of a dimension
71
Materialization of data cube




There are three choices for data cube materialization
given a base cuboid:
Materialize every (cuboid) (full materialization),
 huge amounts of memory space
none (no materialization), or
 slow processing of queries
some (partial materialization)
 trade-off between storage space and response time
 Selection of which cuboids to materialize


Based on size, sharing, access frequency, etc.
A heuristic approach for cuboid selection
 materialize the set of cuboids on which other popularly
referenced cuboids are based
72
Processing Cubes






Complete load of the cube:
all dimension and fact table data is read and
all specified aggregations cuboids are calculated
process a cube when
 its structure is new or
 its dimensions or measures have been edited
Incrementally updating a cube:
 new data is added but existing data not changed and
cube structure si the same
Refreshing:
 data cleared and reloaded
 its aggregations recalculated
 faster then processing:no design of aggregation tables
73
Calculated Members




Dimension member or measure whose value is
computed at run time using an expression
Only the definitions are stored but values exists
only in memory upon a query
do not increase in cube size
Ex: if sales and cost are included in the base
fact table
 a profit measure can be a calculated member
 profit = sales – cost
 Average_sales = sales/#_items_sold
74
Virtual cubes



Combination of multiple cubes in one logical
cube
 can be based on a single cube to expose
only selected subsets of measures and
dimensions
Require no physical space
 store only the dimensions information not
actual data
provide a valuable security functiton
 limiting the access of some users
75
Member Properties




Attribute of a dimension member
provides additional information about the member
a column in the same dimension table as the
associated members
used in queries
 provide users more options when analysing cube
data
76
Example: time table


A typical time table:
(time_id,day,month,quarter,year,business
day,leap,day of the week)
 dimension levels day<month<quarter<year
 member properties for day:
 weekend or business day:0 or 1
 day of the week:1,2,3,...,7
 a member property for year is
 whether it is leap year or not:0 or 1
77
Virtual Dimensions




Logical dimension based on a member property
of a level in a physical dimension
enables users to analyze cube data based on
the member properties of dimension levels
add a virtual dimension to a cube only if
 the dimension that supplies its member
property is also included in the cube
adding a virtual dimension does not increase
cube size
 not affect cube processing time


calculated in memory when needed
query processing time is slower
78
Example




The business day column was a member
property for day level of the time dimension
the user may want to investigate sales by
type of day (business or weekend)
makes business day member property as a
virtual dimension of the sale cube
79
Parent Child Dimensions

Based on two dimension table columns that
together define the lieage relationships among
the members of the dimension
 Member key column:identifies each member
 Parent key column: identifies the parent of
each member
80
Example: A HR dimension
Poal West
James Smith
John Grande
Amy Joens
Jill Kelly
Jo Brown
81
A Concept Hierarchy: Dimension (location)
all
all
Europe
region
country
city
office
Germany
Frankfurt
...
...
...
Spain
North_America
Canada
Vancouver ...
L. Chan
...
...
Mexico
Toronto
M. Wind
82
Example: Parent Child Dimension









Emp._Name Emp_Number Man_Emp_Num
James Smith
1
3
Amy Jones
2
3
Paul West
3
3
Jill Kelly
4
3
John Grande
5
1
Jo Brown
6
1
Emp_Num identifies each member
Man_Emp_Nun identifies the parent of each
member
83
Exercise

How do you represent the same organizational
chart by treditional concept hyerarchies?
84