What is a data warehouse?

A data warehouse is a collection of data marts representing historical data from

different operations in the company. This data is stored in a structure optimized for
querying and data analysis as a data warehouse. Table design, dimensions and
organization should be consistent throughout a data warehouse so that reports or
queries across the data warehouse are consistent. A data warehouse can also be viewed
as a database for historical data from different functions within a company.

William Inmon coined the phrase “data warehouse” in 1990. He defined it as a managed
database in which the data is:
Subject oriented: The database is subject oriented because of a shift from application-
oriented data (i.e. data designed to support application processing) to decision-support
data (i.e. data designed to aid in decision making).
Integrated: The database is integrated because of the consolidation of application-
oriented data from different legacy systems.
Time-variant: The database is time-variant because of the distinction between
operational data and informational data – operational data is only temporarily valid (a
“slice of time”).
Non-volatile: New data is always added to the database, rather than replaced. The
database continually absorbs new data, integrating with previous data.

What is a data mart?

A data mart is a segment of a data warehouse that can provide data for reporting and
analysis on a section, unit, department or operation in the company, e.g. sales, payroll,
production. Data marts are sometimes complete individual data warehouses which are
usually smaller than the corporate data warehouse.

What are the benefits of data warehousing?

Data warehouses are designed to perform well with aggregate queries running on large
amounts of data. The structure of data warehouses is easier for end users to navigate,
understand and query against unlike the relational databases primarily designed to
handle lots of transactions.

Data warehouses enable queries that cut across different segments of a company's
operation. E.g. production data could be compared against inventory data even if they
were originally stored in different databases with different structures. Queries that
would be complex in very normalized databases could be easier to build and maintain
in data warehouses, decreasing the workload on transaction systems.

Data warehousing is an efficient way to manage and report on data that is from a
variety of sources, non uniform and scattered throughout a company. Data
warehousing is an efficient way to manage demand for lots of information from lots of
users. Data warehousing provides the capability to analyze large amounts of historical
data for nuggets of wisdom that can provide an organization with competitive
advantage.

What is OLAP?

OLAP stands for Online Analytical Processing. It uses database tables (fact and
dimension tables) to enable multidimensional viewing, analysis and querying of large
amounts of data. E.g. OLAP technology could provide management with fast answers to
complex queries on their operational data or enable them to analyze their company's
historical data for trends and patterns.
What is OLTP?

OLTP stands for Online Transaction Processing. OLTP uses normalized tables to quickly
record large amounts of transactions while making sure that these updates of data
occur in as few places as possible. Consequently OLTP database are designed for
recording the daily operations and transactions of a business. E.g. a timecard system
that supports a large production environment must record successfully a large number
of updates during critical periods like lunch hour, breaks, startup and close of work.

What are dimensions?

Dimensions are categories by which summarized data can be viewed. E.g. a profit
summary in a fact table can be viewed by a Time dimension (profit by month, quarter,
year), Region dimension (profit by country, state, city), Product dimension (profit for
product1, product2).

What are fact tables?

A fact table is a table that contains summarized numerical and historical data (facts)
and a multipart index composed of foreign keys from the primary keys of related
dimension tables.

What are measures?

Measures are numeric data based on columns in a fact table. They are the primary data
which end users are interested in. E.g. a sales fact table may contain a profit measure
which represents profit on each sale.

What are aggregations?

Aggregations are pre-calculated numeric data. By calculating and storing the answers
to a query before users ask for it, the query processing time can be reduced. This is key
in providing fast query performance in OLAP.

What are cubes?

Cubes are data processing units composed of fact tables and dimensions from the data
warehouse. They provide multidimensional views of data, querying and analytical
capabilities to clients.

What is the PivotTable® Service?

This is the primary component that connects clients to the Microsoft® SQL Server™
2000 Analysis Server. It also provides the capability for clients to create local offline
cubes using it as an OLAP server. PivotTable® Service does not have a user interface,
the clients using its services has to provide its user interface.

What are offline OLAP cubes?

These are OLAP cubes created by clients, end users or third-party applications
accessing a data warehouse, relational database or OLAP cube through the Microsoft®
PivotTable® Service. E.g. Microsoft® Excel™ is very popular as a client for creating
offline local OLAP cubes from relational databases for multidimensional analysis. These
cubes have to be maintained and managed by the end users who have to manually
refresh their data.

What are virtual cubes?

These are combinations of one or more real cubes and require no disk space to store
them. They store only the definitions and not the data of the referenced source cubes.
They are similar to views in relational databases.
What are MOLAP cubes?
MOLAP Cubes: stands for Multidimensional OLAP. In MOLAP cubes the data
aggregations and a copy of the fact data are stored in a multidimensional structure on
the Analysis Server computer. It is best when extra storage space is available on the
Analysis Server computer and the best query performance is desired. MOLAP local
cubes contain all the necessary data for calculating aggregates and can be used offline.
MOLAP cubes provide the fastest query response time and performance but require
additional storage space for the extra copy of data from the fact table.

What are ROLAP cubes?

ROLAP Cubes: stands for Relational OLAP. In ROLAP cubes a copy of data from the
fact table is not made and the data aggregates are stored in tables in the source
relational database. A ROLAP cube is best when there is limited space on the Analysis
Server and query performance is not very important. ROLAP local cubes contain the
dimensions and cube definitions but aggregates are calculated when they are needed.
ROLAP cubes requires less storage space than MOLAP and HOLAP cubes.

What are HOLAP cubes?

HOLAP Cubes: stands for Hybrid OLAP. A ROLAP cube has a combination of the
ROLAP and MOLAP cube characteristics. It does not create a copy of the source data
however, data aggregations are stored in a multidimensional structure on the Analysis
Server computer. HOLAP cubes are best when storage space is limited but faster query
responses are needed.

What is the approximate size of a data warehouse?

You can estimate the approximate size of a data warehouse made up of only fact and
dimension tables by estimating the approximate size of the fact tables and ignoring the
sizes of the dimension tables.

To estimate the size of the fact table in bytes, multiply the size of a row by the number
of rows in the fact table. A more exact estimate would include the data types, indexes,
page sizes, etc. An estimate of the number of rows in the fact table is obtained by
multiplying the number of transactions per hour by the number of hours in a typical
work day and then multiplying the result by the number of days in a year and finally
multiplies this result by the number of years of transactions involved. Divide this result
by 1024 to convert to kilobytes and by 1024 again to convert to megabytes.
E.g. A data warehouse will store facts about the help provided by a company’s product
support representatives. The fact table is made of up of a composite key of 7 indexes
(int data type) including the primary key. The fact table also contains 1 measure of time
(datetime data type) and another measure of duration (int data type). 2000 product
incidents are recorded each hour in a relational database. A typical work day is 8 hours
and support is provided for every day in the year. What will be approximate size of this
data warehouse in 5 years?

First calculate the approximate size of a row in bytes (int data type = 4 bytes, datetime
data type = 8 bytes):

Size of a row = size of all composite indexes (add the size of all indexes) + size of all
measures (add the size of all measures).

Size of a row (bytes) = (4 * 7) + (8 + 4).

Size of a row (bytes) = 40 bytes.
Number of rows in fact table = (number of transactions per hour) * (8 hours) * (365 days
in a year).
Number of rows in fact table = (2000 product incidents per hour) * (8Hours ) * (365 days
in a year).
Number of rows in fact table = 2000 * 8 * 365
Number of rows in fact table = 5840000
Size of fact table (1 year) = (Number of rows in fact table) * (Size of a row)
Size of fact table (bytes per year) = 5840000 * 40
Size of fact table (bytes per year) = 233600000.
Size of fact table (megabytes per year) = 233600000 / (1024*1024)
Size of fact table (in megabytes for 5 years) = (23360000 * 5) / (1024 *1024)
Size of fact table (megabytes) = 1113.89 MB
Size of fact table (gigabytes) = 1113.89 / 1024
Size of fact table (gigabytes) = 1.089 GB

Key Elements of Multi-Dimensional Metadata

Aggregate: Pre-stored summary of data or grouping of detailed data which satisfies a

specific business rule. Example rules: sum, min, count, or combinations of them.

Level: A specific property of a dimension. Examples: size, type, and color.

Cube: A set of related factual measures, aggregates, and dimensions for a specific
dimensional analysis problem. Example: regional product sales.

Dimension: A set of level properties that describe a specific aspect of a business, used
for analyzing the factual measures of one or more cubes which use that dimension.
Examples: geography, time, customer and product.

Drilling: Drilling is the term used for navigating through a cube. This navigation is
usually performed to access a summary level of infomation or to provide more detailed
properties of a dimension in a hierarchy.

Fact: A fact is a time variant measurement of quantitative data in a cube; for example,
units sold, sales dollars, or total profit.

Hierarchy: The hierarchy concept refers to the level of granularity represented by the
data in a particular dimension of a cube. For example, state, county, district, and city
represent different granularity in the hierarchy of the geography dimension.

Measure: The means for representing quantitative data in facts or aggregates. Example
measures are total sales or units sold per year.

Normalization: A process used for reducing redundancies and removing anomalies in

related dimension tables in various hierarchies.

Redundancy: The term used for referring to duplication of data among related tables
for the sake of improving the speed of query processing.

Star Schema: A normalized multi-dimensional model in which each disjoint dimension

is represented by a single table.

Snow Flake Schema: A normalized multi-dimensional model in which at least one

dimension is represented by two or more hierarchically related tables.