Database Reference
In-Depth Information
[
72
,
103
]. More details on these concepts are given in Chap.
5
,wherewealso
give further references.
There is not yet a standard definition of the OLAP operations, in a similar
way as the relational algebra operations are defined for the relational algebra.
Many different algebras for OLAP have been proposed in the literature,
each one defining different sets of operations. A comparison of these OLAP
algebras is given in [
181
], where the authors advocate the need for a reference
algebra for OLAP. The definition of the operations we presented in this
chapter was inspired from [
32
].
There are many topics that describe the various business intelligence tools.
We next give some references for commercial and open-source tools. For SQL
Server, the series of topics devoted to Analysis Services [
79
], Integration Ser-
vices [
105
], and Reporting Services [
209
] cover extensively these components.
The business intelligence tools from Oracle are covered in [
175
,
218
], while
those of IBM are covered in [
147
,
225
]. SAP BusinessObjects is presented in
[
81
,
83
], while MicroStrategy is covered in [
50
,
139
]. For Pentaho, the topic
[
18
] gives an overall description of the various components of the Pentaho
Business Intelligence Suite, while Mondrian is covered in the topic [
10
], Kettle
in [
26
,
179
], Reporting in [
57
],andWekain[
228
]. The topic [
157
] is devoted
to Big Data Analytics using Pentaho. On the academic side, a survey of
open-source tools for business intelligence is given in [
199
].
3.9 Review Questions
3.1
What is the meaning of the acronyms OLAP and OLTP?
3.2
Using an example of an application domain that you are familiar with,
describe the various components of the multidimensional model, that
is, facts, measures, dimensions, and hierarchies.
3.3
Why are hierarchies important in data warehouses? Give examples of
various hierarchies.
3.4
Discuss the role of measure aggregation in a data warehouse. How can
measures be characterized?
3.5
Give an example of a problem that may occur when summarizability is
not verified in a data warehouse.
3.6
Describe the various OLAP operations using the example you defined
in Question
3.2
.
3.7
What is an operational database system? What is a data warehouse
system? Explain several aspects that differentiate these systems.
3.8
Give some essential characteristics of a data warehouse. How do a data
warehouse and a data mart differ? Describe two approaches for building
a data warehouse and its associated data marts.
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