OLAP and Its Variants: MOLAP, ROLAP and HOLAP

Before we get into these, let us understand what exactly OLAP is. Read anywhere, and OLAP stands for On Line Analytical Processing, but it is a misnomer, as there is nothing particularly online about it. OLAP is basically a summarized level representation of base level granular data as well as aggregated data across various dimensions and measures. But what are dimensions and measures? Let us take a very simple analogy: Consider our School report cards. Examples of dimensions in these are Subjects and Terms (1st, 2nd etc). But against these, there would be grades or scores. These grades or scores are what we can term as measures. So we rate the dimensions using certain measures. Similarly, every organisation would have its own dimensions and measures, and of course with much higher complexity than the simple Report Card example. Examples of dimensions in organisations can be Geography (e.g. North America, Asia, Middle East etc.), Time (e.g. 2008, 2007 etc.) or Product (e.g. Watches, Perfumes, Laptops, Mobile phones etc.) among many others. The measure can be sales figures, growth rate, market penetration etc. For example, an executive would like to compare the sales figures (Measure) of Mobile phones (Dimension) in North America (Dimension) versus Asia (Dimension), month to month (Dimension) during the last three years (Dimension). Once this executive knows the trend, he or she is able to arrive at a decision and take appropriate action. Most organisations which depend on data to make strategic decisions, would require

To get summary level information of various dimensions and measures To get it as quick as possible And as accurate as possible

OLAP is often referred to as cubes. When we say cubes, the concept is quite similar in concept to a Rubiks cube, which some of us might have played with during our younger days. Here is a simple visualization of the same, in case you need to refresh your memory.

In this cube, the X, Y and Z axes can be the dimensions of any business. Once we define the exact coordinates of these axes, we can get the exact value of the measure, and of course drill down in finer details. This is the broad level concept of an OLAP cube. So now that we have a fair idea about what is OLAP, let us understand the OLAP variants. There are basically three common OLAP variants, namely MOLAP: Multidimensional OLAP ROLAP: Relational OLAP HOLAP: Hybrid OLAP In MOLAP, the data is pre-calculated in a multidimensional format (also called cubes) and kept for use. So the execution time for the query to run will be fast, since data is already aggregated. However, the limitation is that the information accessed might not be up-to-date, and it can only handle limited volume of data. Also, this model takes up more memory, as data is pre-aggregated. In ROLAP, each time the query is run, the data is fetched from the relational tables, so the execution time is slow. However, the data is up-to-date and this model can handle large volumes of data. As compared to MOLAP, it occupies less memory space, since data is only fetched each time the query runs. In HOLAP, it is a combination of the two. This means, some queries are executed like in ROLAP and some like in MOLAP or to be more specific, for detailed drill down or drill up, it normally uses the ROLAP model and for aggregated information, it uses MOLAP. Depending on the nature of the business requirements, the customer can use any of the above variants, keeping in mind a few parameters such as required speed of query processing, required data latency as well as hardware and connectivity parameters. For example, in certain cases, speed of query is more critical and at other times, space is more critical. Either ways, the moot point is that it depends on the customer, the data and last but not the least, the business requirements.