OLAP operations
What is OLAP?
• Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) is a category of software
that allows users to analyze information from multiple database
systems at the same time. It is a technology that enables
analysts to extract and view business data from different points
of view.
• Analysts frequently need to group, aggregate and join data.
These operations in relational databases are resource intensive.
With OLAP data can be pre-calculated and pre-aggregated,
making analysis faster.
• OLAP databases are divided into one or more cubes. The cubes
are designed in such a way that creating and viewing reports
become easy. OLAP stands for Online Analytical Processing.
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OLAP cube
OLAP cube
• At the core of the OLAP concept, is an OLAP Cube. The OLAP cube
is a data structure optimized for very quick data analysis.
• The OLAP Cube consists of numeric facts called measures which
are categorized by dimensions. OLAP Cube is also called
the hypercube.
• Usually, data operations and analysis are performed using the
simple spreadsheet, where data values are arranged in row and
column format. This is ideal for two-dimensional data. However,
OLAP contains multidimensional data, with data usually obtained
from a different and unrelated source. Using a spreadsheet is not
an optimal option. The cube can store and analyze
multidimensional data in a logical and orderly manner.
How does it work?
• A Data warehouse would extract information
from multiple data sources and formats like
text files, excel sheet, multimedia files, etc.
• The extracted data is cleaned and
transformed. Data is loaded into an OLAP
server (or OLAP cube) where information is
pre-calculated in advance for further analysis.
Basic analytical operations of OLAP
• Four types of analytical operations in OLAP
are:
1. Roll-up
2. Drill-down
3. Slice and dice
4. Pivot (rotate)
1) Roll-up
• Roll-up is also known as "consolidation" or
"aggregation." The Roll-up operation can be
performed in 2 ways
1. Reducing dimensions
2. Climbing up concept hierarchy. Concept
hierarchy is a system of grouping things
based on their order or level.
1) Roll-up
1) Roll-up
• In this example, cities New jersey and Los Angles and
rolled up into country USA
• The sales figure of New Jersey and Los Angeles are 440
and 1560 respectively. They become 2000 after roll-up
• In this aggregation process, data is location hierarchy
moves up from city to the country.
• In the roll-up process at least one or more dimensions
need to be removed. In this example, Quater
dimension is removed.
2) Drill-down
• In drill-down data is fragmented into smaller
parts. It is the opposite of the rollup process. It
can be done via
• Moving down the concept hierarchy
• Increasing a dimension
2) Drill-down
2) Drill-down
• Quater Q1 is drilled down to months January,
February, and March. Corresponding sales are
also registers.
• In this example, dimension months are added.
3) Slice
• Here, one dimension is selected, and a new sub-cube is created.
• Following diagram explain how slice operation performed:
Dimension Time is Sliced with Q1 as the filter.
A new cube is created altogether.
3) Dice
• This operation is similar to a slice. The difference in dice is you select 2 or more dimensions
that result in the creation of a sub-cube.
4) Pivot
• In Pivot, you rotate the data axes to provide a substitute presentation of data.
• In the following example, the pivot is based on item types.
Types of OLAP systems
• OLAP Hierarchical Structure
Types of OLAP systems
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