Data Warehouse and

On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP)

 What is a Data Warehouse?
• Data warehousing provides architectures and tools for business executives to
systematically organize, understand, and use their data to make strategic decisions.

• Data warehouses have been defined in many ways:

– A decision support database that is maintained separately from an
organization’s operational databases.
– Data warehouses support information processing by providing a solid platform
of consolidated, historical data for analysis.

• Data warehousing:
– The process of constructing and using data warehouses.

• A data warehouse is constructed by integrating data from multiple heterogeneous

sources that support analytical reporting, structured and/or ad-hoc queries, and
decision making.

• Data warehousing involves data cleaning, data integration, and data

consolidations.
 Data Warehouse and OLAP
• Data warehouses generalize and consolidate data in multidimensional space.
– The construction of data warehouses involves data cleaning, data integration, and
data transformation and can be viewed as an important pre-processing step for
data mining.

• Data warehouses provide on-line analytical processing (OLAP) tools for the
interactive analysis of multidimensional data of varied granularities, which facilitates
effective data generalization and data mining.
– Many other data mining functions, such as association, classification, prediction,
and clustering, can be integrated with OLAP operations to enhance interactive
mining of knowledge at multiple levels of abstraction.
 Major Features of a Data Warehouse
Subject-Oriented
Four major features of a data warehouse:
• A data warehouse is a subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant, and nonvolatile
collection of data in support of management’s decision-making process.

Subject-Oriented:
• A data warehouse is organized around major subjects, such as customer, product,
sales.
• A data warehouse focuses on the modeling and analysis of data for decision makers,
not on daily operations or transaction processing.
• A data warehouse provides a simple and concise view around particular subject issues
by excluding data that are not useful in the decision support process.
 Major Features of a Data Warehouse
Integrated
Integrated:
• A data warehouse is constructed by integrating multiple heterogeneous data sources
such as relational databases, flat files, on-line transaction records.
• Data cleaning and data integration techniques are applied to ensure consistency in
naming conventions, encoding structures, attribute measures, etc.
– When data is moved to the warehouse from operational databases, it is converted.
 Major Features of a Data Warehouse
Time-Variant
Time-Variant:
• The time horizon for a 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 structure of operational data may or may not contain “time element”
 Major Features of a Data Warehouse
Non-volatile
Non-volatile:
• A data warehouse is a physically separate store of data transformed from the
operational environment.
• Operational update of data does not occur in a 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
 Operational Database Systems
and Data Warehouses
• The major task of on-line operational database systems is to perform on-line
transaction and query processing.
– These systems are called on-line transaction processing (OLTP) systems.
– They cover most of the day-to-day operations of an organization, such as
purchasing, inventory, banking, payroll, registration, and accounting.

• Data warehouse systems, on the other hand, serve users or knowledge workers in the
role of data analysis and decision making.
– Such systems can organize and present data in various formats in order to
accommodate the diverse needs of the different users.
– These systems are known as on-line analytical processing (OLAP) systems.
 OLTP vs. OLAP
Users and system orientation:
• An OLTP system is customer-oriented and is used for transaction and query
processing by clerks, clients, and IT professionals.
• An OLAP system is market-oriented and is used for data analysis by knowledge
workers, including managers, executives, and analysts.
Data contents:
• An OLTP system manages current data that, typically, are too detailed to be easily
used for decision making.
• An OLAP system manages large amounts of historical data, provides facilities for
summarization and aggregation.
Database design:
• An OLTP system usually adopts an entity-relationship (ER) data model and an
application-oriented database design.
• An OLAP system typically adopts either a star or snowflake model and a subject
oriented database design.
 OLTP vs. OLAP …
View:
• OLTP focuses on current and local data view where as
• OLAP has multiple version of DB schema due to evolutionary process of the
enterprise.

Access patterns:
• OLTP access pattern is usually update where as
• OLAP access pattern is read-only but complex queries
 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 historical,
detailed, flat relational summarized, multidimensional
isolated integrated, consolidated
usage repetitive ad-hoc
access read/write lots of scans
index/hash on prim. key
unit of work short, simple transaction complex query
# records accessed tens millions
#users thousands hundreds
DB size 100MB-GB 100GB-TB
metric transaction throughput query throughput, response
 A Three-Tier Data Warehouse Architecture

• Data warehouses often adopt

a three-tier architecture
 A Three-Tier Data Warehouse Architecture
• Back-end tools and utilities are used to feed
data into the bottom tier from operational
databases or other external sources.

• Data extraction: get data from multiple,

heterogeneous, and external sources.
• Data cleaning: detect errors in the data and
rectify them when possible
• Data transformation: convert data from
legacy or host format to warehouse format
• Load: sort, summarize, consolidate, compute
views, check integrity, and build indices and
partitions
• Refresh: propagate the updates from the data
sources to the warehouse
 Three Data Warehouse Models
• From the architecture point of view, there are three data warehouse models: enterprise
warehouse, data mart and virtual warehouse.

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

Virtual Warehouse
• A set of views over operational databases
• Only some of the possible summary views may be materialized
 Multidimensional Data Model: Data Cube
• Data warehouses and OLAP tools are based on a multidimensional data model.

• This model views data in the form of a data cube.

• A data cube allows data to be modeled and viewed in multiple dimensions.

– It is defined by dimensions and facts.
– Dimensions are the perspectives or entities with respect to which an organization wants to
keep records.
• Each dimension may have a table associated with it, called a dimension table, which further
describes the dimension.
• For example, a dimension table for item may contain the attributes item_name, brand, and type.
– Facts are numerical measures.
• Examples of facts for a sales data warehouse include dollars_sold & units_sold
 Data Cube: A 2-D Data Cube
• Although we usually think of cubes as 3-D geometric structures, in data warehousing
the data cube is n-dimensional.
• A 2-D data cube:
– dimensions time and item, the measure displayed (fact) is dollars_sold.
– In this 2-D representation, the sales for Vancouver are shown with respect to the time
dimension (organized in quarters) and the item dimension (organized according to the
types of items sold).
 Data Cube: A 3-D Data Cube
• A 3-D data cube representation of the data according to the dimensions time, item,
and location. The measure displayed is dollars_sold.
 From Tables 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
– Dimension tables, such as item (item_name, brand, type), or time (day, week,
month, quarter, year)
– Fact table contains measures (such as dollars_sold) and keys to each of the
related dimension tables
• In data warehousing literature,
– An n-D base cube is called a base cuboid.
– The top most 0-D cuboid, which holds the highest-level of summarization, is called the
apex cuboid.
• The lattice of cuboids forms a data cube.
 Data Cube: A Lattice of Cuboids
• A lattice of cuboids, making up a 4-D data cube for the dimensions time, item,
location, and supplier.
– Each cuboid represents a different degree of summarization.
• 0-D cuboid which holds highest level of
summarization, is called apex cuboid.
• This is the total sales summarized over all four
dimensions.
• The apex cuboid is typically denoted by all.

• A 3-D (nonbase) cuboid for time, item,

location, summarized for all suppliers.

• The cuboid that holds the lowest level of

summarization is called the base cuboid.
– base cuboid for time, item, location,
and supplier dimensions
 Concept Hierarchies
• A concept hierarchy defines a sequence of mappings from a set of low-level concepts
to higher-level, more general concepts.
• Many concept hierarchies are implicit within the database schema.
• Concept hierarchies may be provided manually by system users, domain experts, or
knowledge engineers, or may be automatically generated based on statistical analysis
of the data distribution.
• A concept hierarchy that is a total or partial order among attributes in a database
schema is called a schema hierarchy.
• Concept hierarchies may also be defined by discretizing or grouping values for a
given dimension, resulting in a set-grouping hierarchy.
– A total or partial order can be defined among groups of values.
 Concept Hierarchies –
A concept hierarchy for the dimension location
 Concept Hierarchies: Hierarchical and lattice
structures of attributes in warehouse dimensions

a hierarchy for location a lattice for time

 Concept Hierarchies:
A concept hierarchy for the attribute price
 Typical OLAP Operations
• Roll up (drill-up): summarize data
– by climbing up hierarchy or by dimension reduction

• Drill down (roll down): reverse of roll-up

– from higher level summary to lower level summary or detailed data, or
introducing new dimensions

• Slice and dice: project and select

• Pivot (rotate):
– reorient the cube, visualization, 3D to series of 2D planes
 OLAP Operation: Roll-up
• The roll-up operation (also called the drill-up
operation) performs aggregation on a data cube,
either by climbing up a concept hierarchy for a
dimension or by dimension reduction.
OLAP Operation: Drill-down

• Drill-down is the reverse

of roll-up. It navigates
from less detailed data to
more detailed data.
• Drill-down can be realized
by either stepping down a
concept hierarchy for a
dimension or introducing
additional dimensions.
 OLAP Operation: Slice

• The slice operation

performs a selection on
one dimension of the
given cube, resulting in a
subcube.
 OLAP Operation: Dice

• The dice operation defines a

subcube by performing a selection
on two or more dimensions.
 OLAP Operation: Pivot

• Pivot (rotate) is a visualization

operation that rotates the data axes in
view in order to provide an
alternative presentation of the data.
 Data Warehouse Usage
• Three kinds of data warehouse applications:
– Information processing:
• supports querying, basic statistical analysis, and reporting using crosstabs,
tables, charts and graphs
– Analytical processing:
• multidimensional analysis of data warehouse data
• supports basic OLAP operations, slice-dice, drilling, pivoting
– Data mining:
• knowledge discovery from hidden patterns
• supports associations, constructing analytical models, performing
classification and prediction, and presenting the mining results using
visualization tools
 Data Warehouse and OLAP: Summary
• A data warehouse is a subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant, and nonvolatile
collection of data organized in support of management decision making.
– Several factors distinguish data warehouses from operational databases.
– Because the two systems provide quite different functionalities and require different kinds
of data, it is necessary to maintain data warehouses separately from operational databases.
• A multidimensional data model is typically used for the design of corporate data
warehouses.
– A multidimensional data model can adopt a star schema, snowflake schema, or fact
constellation schema.
– The core of the multidimensional model is the data cube, which consists of a large set of
facts (or measures) and a number of dimensions.
– Dimensions are the entities or perspectives with respect to which an organization wants to
keep records and are hierarchical in nature.
• A data cube consists of a lattice of cuboids, each corresponding to a different degree
of summarization of the given multidimensional data.
 Data Warehouse and OLAP: Summary
• Concept hierarchies organize the values of dimensions into gradual levels of
abstraction.
• On-line analytical processing (OLAP) can be performed in data warehouses using
the multidimensional data model.
– Typical OLAP operations include roll-up, drill-down,, slice-and-dice, pivot (rotate), as well as
statistical operations such as ranking and computing moving averages and growth rates.
• Data warehouses often adopt a three-tier architecture.
– The bottom tier is a warehouse database server, which is a relational database system.
– The middle tier is an OLAP server, and
– The top tier is a client, containing query and reporting tools.
• A data warehouse contains back-end tools and utilities for populating and refreshing
the warehouse.
– data extraction, data cleaning, data transformation, loading, refreshing, and warehouse management.
• Data warehouse metadata are data defining the warehouse objects.
– A metadata repository provides details regarding the warehouse structure, data history, the algorithms
used for summarization, mappings from the source data to warehouse form.