Fall 2004, CIS, Temple University

CIS527: Data Warehousing, Filtering, and

Mining

Lecture 2

 Data Warehousing and OLAP Technology for Data Mining

Lecture slides taken/modified from:

 Jiawei Han (http://www-sal.cs.uiuc.edu/~hanj/DM_Book.html)

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

 Provide a simple and concise view around particular

subject issues by excluding data that are not useful in
the decision support process.
 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.

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
 However, 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 necessarily occur in
the data warehouse environment.
 Does not require transaction processing, recovery,
and concurrency control mechanisms
 Often 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
 A query posed to a client site is translated into queries
appropriate for individual heterogeneous sites; The results are
integrated into a global answer set
 Involving complex information filtering
 Competition for resources at local sources
 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
 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:
 Decision support requires historical data which
operational DBs do not typically maintain
 Decision Support requires consolidation (aggregation,
summarization) of data from heterogeneous sources
 Different sources typically use inconsistent data
representations, codes and formats which have to be
reconciled
10
 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

11
 A Multi-Dimensional Data Model

 A data warehouse is based on a multidimensional data model which

views data in the form of a data cube
 A data cube 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.
12
 A Sample Data Cube
Time Total annual sales
1Qtr 2Qtr 3Qtr 4Qtr sum of TV in U.S.A.
TV
PC U.S.A
VCR

Location
sum
Canada

Mexico

sum

13
 4-D Data Cube

Supplier 1

Supplier 2

Supplier 3

14
 Cube: A Lattice of Cuboids

all
0-D(apex) cuboid

time item location supplier

1-D cuboids

time,item time,location item,location location,supplier

2-D cuboids
time,supplier item,supplier

time,location,supplier
time,item,location 3-D cuboids
time,item,supplier item,location,supplier

4-D(base) cuboid
time, item, location, supplier
15
 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
16
 Example of Star Schema
time
time_key item
day item_key
day_of_the_week Sales Fact Table item_name
month brand
quarter time_key type
year supplier_type
item_key
branch_key
branch location
location_key
branch_key location_key
branch_name units_sold street
branch_type city
dollars_sold province_or_street
country
avg_sales
Measures
17
 Example of Snowflake Schema

time item
time_key item_key supplier
day Sales Fact Table item_name supplier_key
day_of_the_week brand supplier_type
time_key type
month
quarter item_key supplier_key
year
branch_key
branch location
location_key
location_key
branch_key
units_sold street
branch_name
city_key city
branch_type
dollars_sold
city_key
avg_sales city
province
Measures
country
18
 Example of Fact Constellation
time
time_key Shipping Fact Table
day item
day_of_the_week Sales Fact Table item_key time_key
month item_name
quarter time_key brand item_key
year type shipper_key
item_key supplier_type
branch_key from_location

branch location_key location to_location

branch_key location_key dollars_cost
branch_name
units_sold
street
branch_type dollars_sold city units_shipped
province_or_street
avg_sales country shipper
Measures shipper_key
shipper_name
location_key
shipper_type
19
 A Data Mining Query Language,
DMQL: Language Primitives
 Cube Definition (Fact Table)
define cube <cube_name> [<dimension_list>]:
<measure_list>
 Dimension Definition (Dimension Table)
define dimension <dimension_name> as
(<attribute_or_subdimension_list>)
 Special Case (Shared Dimension Tables)
 First time as “cube definition”

 define dimension <dimension_name> as

<dimension_name_first_time> in cube
<cube_name_first_time>

20
 Defining a Star Schema in DMQL

define cube sales_star [time, item, branch, location]:

dollars_sold = sum(sales_in_dollars), avg_sales =
avg(sales_in_dollars), units_sold = count(*)
define dimension time as (time_key, day, day_of_week,
month, quarter, year)
define dimension item as (item_key, item_name, brand,
type, supplier_type)
define dimension branch as (branch_key, branch_name,
branch_type)
define dimension location as (location_key, street, city,
province_or_state, country)

21
 Defining a Snowflake Schema in DMQL

define cube sales_snowflake [time, item, branch, location]:

dollars_sold = sum(sales_in_dollars), avg_sales =
avg(sales_in_dollars), units_sold = count(*)
define dimension time as (time_key, day, day_of_week,
month, quarter, year)
define dimension item as (item_key, item_name, brand, type,
supplier(supplier_key, supplier_type))
define dimension branch as (branch_key, branch_name,
branch_type)
define dimension location as (location_key, street,
city(city_key, province_or_state, country))
22
 Defining a Fact Constellation in DMQL
define cube sales [time, item, branch, location]:
dollars_sold = sum(sales_in_dollars), avg_sales =
avg(sales_in_dollars), units_sold = count(*)
define dimension time as (time_key, day, day_of_week, month, quarter, year)
define dimension item as (item_key, item_name, brand, type, supplier_type)
define dimension branch as (branch_key, branch_name, branch_type)
define dimension location as (location_key, street, city, province_or_state,
country)
define cube shipping [time, item, shipper, from_location, to_location]:
dollar_cost = sum(cost_in_dollars), unit_shipped = count(*)
define dimension time as time in cube sales
define dimension item as item in cube sales
define dimension shipper as (shipper_key, shipper_name, location as location
in cube sales, shipper_type)
define dimension from_location as location in cube sales
define dimension to_location as location in cube sales

23
 Measures: Three Categories
Measure: a function evaluated on aggregated data
corresponding to given dimension-value pairs.
Measures can be:
 distributive: if the measure can be calculated in a
distributive manner.
 E.g., count(), sum(), min(), max().
 algebraic: if it can be computed from arguments obtained
by applying distributive aggregate functions.
 E.g., avg()=sum()/count(), min_N(), standard_deviation().
 holistic: if it is not algebraic.
 E.g., median(), mode(), rank().

24
 Measures: Three Categories

 Distributive and algebraic

measures are ideal for data
cubes.
 Calculated measures at lower
levels can be used directly at
higher levels.
 Holistic measures can be
difficult to calculate efficiently.
 Holistic measures could often
be efficiently approximated.

25
Browsing a Data Cube

 Visualization
 OLAP capabilities
 Interactive manipulation
26
 A Concept Hierarchy
• Concept hierarchies allow data to be handled
at varying levels of abstraction

Dimensions: Product, Location, Time

Hierarchical summarization paths

Industry Region Year

Product

Category Country Quarter

Product City Month Week

Office Day
Month
27
 Typical OLAP Operations (Fig 2.10)
 Roll up (drill-up): summarize data
 by climbing up concept 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.
 Other 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)
28
 Querying Using a Star-Net Model
Customer Orders
Shipping Method
Customer
CONTRACTS
AIR-EXPRESS
Each circle is
ORDER called a footprint
TRUCK
PRODUCT LINE
Time Product
ANNUALY QTRLY DAILY PRODUCT ITEM PRODUCT GROUP
CITY
SALES PERSON
COUNTRY
DISTRICT

REGION
DIVISION
Location
Promotion Organization
29
 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

30
 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, quick
modifications, timely adaptation of new designs and technologies
 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

31
 Multi-Tiered Architecture

Monitor
& OLAP Server
other Metadata
sources Integrator

Analysis
Operational Extract Query
Transform Data Serve Reports
DBs
Load
Refresh
Warehouse Data mining

Data Marts

Data Sources Data Storage OLAP Engine Front-End Tools

32
 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
33
 OLAP Server Architectures
 Relational OLAP (ROLAP)
 Use relational or extended-relational DBMS to store and

manage warehouse data

 Include optimization of DBMS backend and additional tools

and services
 greater scalability

 Multidimensional OLAP (MOLAP)

 Array-based multidimensional storage engine (sparse

matrix techniques)
 fast indexing to pre-computed summarized data

 Hybrid OLAP (HOLAP)

 User flexibility (low level: relational, high-level: array)

 Specialized SQL servers

 specialized support for SQL queries over star/snowflake

schemas
34
 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

35
 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
 How many cuboids in an n-dimensional cube with L
levels? n
T   ( Li 1)
i 1

 Materialization of data cube

 Materialize every (cuboid) (full materialization), none
(no materialization), or some (partial materialization)
 Selection of which cuboids to materialize
 Based on size, sharing, access frequency, etc.
36
 Cube Operation
 Cube definition and computation in DMQL
define cube sales[item, city, year]: sum(sales_in_dollars)
compute cube sales
 Transform it into a SQL-like language (with a new operator cube by,
introduced by Gray et al.’96) ()
SELECT item, city, year, SUM (amount)
FROM SALES (city) (item) (year)
CUBE BY item, city, year
 Need compute the following Group-Bys
(date, product, customer), (city, item) (city, year) (item, year)
(date,product),(date, customer), (product, customer),
(date), (product), (customer)
() SELECT item, city, year, SUM (city, item, year)
(amount)
FROM SALES
GROUP BY item, year 37
 Cube Computation: ROLAP vs. MOLAP

 ROLAP-based cubing algorithms

 Key-based addressing
 Sorting, hashing, and grouping operations are applied to the
dimension attributes to reorder and cluster related tuples
 Aggregates may be computed from previously computed
aggregates, rather than from the base fact table
 MOLAP-based cubing algorithms
 Direct array addressing
 Partition the array into chunks that fit the memory
 Compute aggregates by visiting cube chunks
 Possible to exploit ordering of chunks for faster calculation

38
 Multiway Array Aggregation for MOLAP
 Partition arrays into chunks (a small subcube which fits in memory).
 Compressed sparse array addressing: (chunk_id, offset)
 Compute aggregates in “multiway” by visiting cube cells in the order
which minimizes the # of times to visit each cell, and reduces
memory access and storage cost.
C c3 61
c2 45
62 63 64
46 47 48
c1 29 30 31 32 What is the best
c0
b3 B13 14 15 16 60 traversing order
44
9
28 56 to do multi-way
b2
B 40
24 52 aggregation?
b1 5 36
20
b0 1 2 3 4
a0 a1 a2 a3
A 39
Multiway Array Aggregation for MOLAP

C c3 61
c2 45
62 63 64
46 47 48
c1 29 30 31 32
c0
B13 14 15 16 60
b3 44
B 28 56
b2 9
40
24 52
b1 5
36
20
1 2 3 4
b0
After scan {1,2,3,4}:
a0 a1 a2 a3
A • b0c0 chunk is computed
• a0c0 and a0b0 are not
computed

40
 Multiway Array Aggregation for MOLAP
We need to keep a We need to keep 4
single b-c chunk in a-c chunks in
memory memory

C c3 61 62 63 64
c2 45 46 47 48 After scan 1-13:
c1 29 30 31 32
c0
B13
• a0c0 and b0c0
14 15 16 60
b3 44 chunks are
B b2 9
28 56 computed
40
24
b1 5
36
52 • a0b0 is not
20 computed (we will
b0 1 2 3 4
need to scan 1-49)
a0 a1 a2 a3
A
We need to keep 16
a-b chunks in
memory

41
 Multiway Array Aggregation for MOLAP

 Method: the planes should be sorted and computed

according to their size in ascending order.
 The proposed scan is optimal if |C|>|B|>|A|

 See the details of Example 2.12 (pp. 75-78)

 MOLAP cube computation is faster than ROLAP

 Limitation of MOLAP: computing well only for a small
number of dimensions
 If there are a large number of dimensions use the
iceberg cube computation: process only “dense” chunks

42
 Indexing OLAP Data: Bitmap Index
 Suitable for low cardinality domains
 Index on a particular column
 Each value in the column has a bit vector: bit-op is fast
 The length of the bit vector: # of records in the base table
 The i-th bit is set if the i-th row of the base table has the value
for the indexed column

Base table Index on Region Index on Type

Cust Region Type RecIDAsia Europe America RecID Retail Dealer
C1 Asia Retail 1 1 0 0 1 1 0
C2 Europe Dealer 2 0 1 0 2 0 1
C3 Asia Dealer 3 1 0 0 3 0 1
C4 America Retail 4 0 0 1 4 1 0
C5 Europe Dealer 5 0 1 0 5 0 1
43
 Indexing OLAP Data: Join Indices
 Join index materializes relational join and speeds
up relational join — a rather costly operation
 In data warehouses, join index relates the values
of the dimensions of a start schema to rows in
the fact table.
 E.g. fact table: Sales and two dimensions
location and item
 A join index on location is a list of pairs

<loc_name,T_id> sorted by location

 A join index on location-and-item is a list

of triples <loc_name,item_name, T_id>

sorted by location and item names
 Search of a join index can still be slow
 Bitmapped join index allows speed-up by using
bit vectors instead of dimension attribute names

44
 Online Aggregation

 Consider an aggregate query:

“finding the average sales by state“
 Can we provide the user with some information before
the exact average is computed for all states?
 Solution: show the current “running average” for each state as
the computation proceeds.
 Even better, if we use statistical techniques and sample tuples
to aggregate instead of simply scanning the aggregated table,
we can provide bounds such as “the average for Wisconsin is
2000±102 with 95% probability.

45
 Efficient Processing of OLAP Queries

 Determine which operations should be performed on the

available cuboids:
 transform drill, roll, etc. into corresponding SQL and/or
OLAP operations, e.g, dice = selection + projection
 Determine to which materialized cuboid(s) the relevant
operations should be applied.
 Exploring indexing structures and compressed vs. dense
array structures in MOLAP (trade-off between indexing and
storage performance)
46
 Metadata Repository
 Meta data is the data defining warehouse objects. It has the following
kinds
 Description of the structure of the warehouse

 schema, view, dimensions, hierarchies, derived data definitions, data

mart locations and contents
 Operational meta-data
 data lineage (history of migrated data and transformation path),
currency of data (active, archived, or purged), monitoring information
(warehouse usage statistics, error reports, audit trails)
 The algorithms used for summarization
 The mapping from operational environment to the data warehouse
 Data related to system performance
 warehouse schema, view and derived data definitions
 Business data
 business terms and definitions, ownership of data, charging policies
47
 Data Warehouse Back-End Tools and
Utilities
 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
48
 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

49
 Discovery-Driven Exploration of Data
Cubes
 Hypothesis-driven: exploration by user, huge search space
 Discovery-driven (Sarawagi et al.’98)
 pre-compute measures indicating exceptions, guide user in the
data analysis, at all levels of aggregation
 Exception: significantly different from the value anticipated,
based on a statistical model
 Visual cues such as background color are used to reflect the
degree of exception of each cell
 Computation of exception indicator can be overlapped with cube
construction

50
Examples: Discovery-Driven Data Cubes

51
 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

52
 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.
 Differences among the three tasks
53
 From On-Line Analytical Processing
to On Line Analytical Mining (OLAM)
 Why online analytical mining?
 High quality of data in data warehouses
 DW contains integrated, consistent, cleaned data

 Available information processing structure surrounding data

warehouses
 ODBC, OLEDB, Web accessing, service facilities, reporting

and OLAP tools

 OLAP-based exploratory data analysis
 mining with drilling, dicing, pivoting, etc.

 On-line selection of data mining functions

 integration and swapping of multiple mining functions,

algorithms, and tasks.

 Architecture of OLAM
54
 Summary
 Data warehouse
 A subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant, and nonvolatile collection of
data in support of management’s decision-making process
 A multi-dimensional model of a data warehouse
 Star schema, snowflake schema, fact constellations
 A data cube consists of dimensions & measures
 OLAP operations: drilling, rolling, slicing, dicing and pivoting
 OLAP servers: ROLAP, MOLAP, HOLAP
 Efficient computation of data cubes
 Partial vs. full vs. no materialization
 Multiway array aggregation
 Bitmap index and join index implementations
 Further development of data cube technology
 Discovery-drive and multi-feature cubes
 From OLAP to OLAM (on-line analytical mining)

55