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A data warehouse is a strategic collection of all types of data in support of the decision-making process at all levels of an enterprise.

Business intelligence is the process of transforming data into information and through discovery transforming that information into knowledge. Gartner Group

The dimensional model is essentially made up of measures and dimensions. Measures contain or calculate data, and dimensions organize data The multidimensional model has the following elements: Measures Dimensions: Hierarchies Levels Attributes

Dimensions may contain the following elements: Dimensions optionally have hierarchies, which are logical structures that group like members of a dimension together for the purposes of analysis, aggregation, or allocation.

 Hierarchies may or may not have levels because some hierarchies are not level based. Dimensions may also have attributes, which are used to provide more information about members of the dimension. Attributes are useful when filtering that dimension for analysis.

Physical Layers of a Data Warehouse Staging Area You need to clean and process your operational data before putting it into the warehouse. Most data warehouses use a staging area to perform this operation. This is especially important when data is being extracted from multiple source systems Atomic Data Layer The atomic data layer is the enterprise data model, which stores data in the third normal form. This is the most detail level of data; it does not hold any aggregate data. The atomic data layer is used as the source for dependent data marts and summary data. Performance Data Layer The performance data layer is also known as the data exploration layer of the warehouse. It is built from the base data warehouse schema, containing summary data that allows for fast access for reporting and analytic applications. This summary layer is often implemented as a star or snowflake schema with materialized views and cubes.

Oracle OLAP is an option to Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Oracle OLAP offers: Multidimensional OLAP (MOLAP), array-based storage, and retrieval model SQL and dimensional access to multidimensional cubes Sophisticated calculations Excellent aggregation performance Embedded BI metadata

ROLAP Versus MOLAP

Entirely in the relational database. Data is stored entirely in relational tables in a data warehouse and made available to applications by OLAP metadata. During user sessions, data is selected and manipulated in the relational database. This method is typically called Relational OLAP or ROLAP. Entirely in the multidimensional analytical workspace. As a routine maintenance task, data is loaded into dimensions and variables in the workspace from one or more sources (including the relational database and flat files) and saved for use by all sessions. During user sessions, data is selected and manipulated in the analytical workspace. This method is typically called Multidimensional OLAP or MOLAP.

A data warehouse is a subject-oriented, integrated, nonvolatile, and time-variant collection of data in support of managements decisions. W.H. Inmon An enterprise-structured repository of subject-oriented, timevariant, historical data used for information retrieval and decision support. The data warehouse stores atomic and summary data. Oracles definition of a data warehouse