Understanding

Multi Dimensional Database

Prepared By
Amit Sharma
Hyperion/OBIEE Trainer
arnhyperion.wordpress.com
Aloo_a2@yahoo.com
Review
 Architecture
 Characteristics
 Relational OLAP
 Multidimensional OLAP
 ROLAP VS. MOLAP
Star Schema
 Fact table
 Dimensions
 Drilling Down & Roll up
 Slicing & Dicing
 Fact
• Definition : Facts are numeric measurements
(values) that represent a specific business activity.
• Facts are stored in a FACT table I.e. the center of
the star schema.
• Facts are used in business data analysis, are units,
cost, prices and revenues
• Example: sales figures are numeric measurements
that represent product and/or service sales.
 Fact Table
Central table
– Mostly raw numeric items
– Narrow rows, a few columns at most
– Large number of rows (millions to a
billion)
– Access via dimensions
 Fact Table
Definition :The centralized table in a star schema is called as
FACT table, that contains facts and connected to dimensions.
A fact table typically has two types of columns:
 Contain facts and
 Foreign keys to dimension tables.
The primary key of a fact table is usually a composite key that
is made up of all of its foreign keys.
• A fact table might contain either detail level facts or facts
that have been aggregated (fact tables that contain
aggregated facts are often instead called summary tables). A
fact table usually contains facts with the same level of
aggregation.
 Dimension
• Definition : Qualifying characteristics that provide additional
perspective to a given fact.
• Example: sales might be compared by product from region to
region and from one time period to the next.
• Here sales have product, location and time dimensions.
• Such dimensions are stored in DIMENSIONAL TABLE.
 Dimension Tables
• Definition: The dimensions of the fact table are further
described with dimension tables
• Fact table:
Sales (Market_id, Product_Id, Time_Id, Sales_Amt)
• Dimension Tables:
Market (Market_Id, City, State, Region)
Product (Product_Id, Name, Category, Price)
Time (Time_Id, Week, Month, Quarter)
 What is Star Schema?

• Definition: Star Schema is a relational database schema for

representing multidimensional data. It is the simplest form
of data warehouse schema that contains one or more
dimensions and fact tables.
• It is called a star schema because the entity-relationship
diagram between dimensions and fact tables resembles a
star where one fact table is connected to multiple
dimensions.
• The center of the star schema consists of a large fact
table and it points towards the dimension tables.
• The advantage of star schema are slicing down,
performance increase and easy understanding of data.
 Steps in designing Star Schema
 Identify a business process for analysis(like sales).
 Identify measures or facts (sales dollar).
 Identify dimensions for facts(product dimension, location
dimension, time dimension, organization dimension).
 List the columns that describe each dimension.(region name,
branch name, region name).
 Determine the lowest level of summary in a fact table(sales
dollar).
 In a star schema every dimension will have a primary key.
 In a star schema, a dimension table will not have any parent
table.
• Whereas in a snow flake schema, a dimension table will have
one or more parent tables.
 Hierarchies for the dimensions are stored in the dimensional
table itself in star schema.
 Whereas hierarchies are broken into separate tables in snow
flake schema. These hierarchies helps to drill down the data from
topmost hierarchies to the lowermost hierarchies.
 Attribute
s
• Each dimension table contain attributes.
• Used to search, filter and classify facts.
• Example, Sales, we can identify some attributes for
each dimension:
– Product Dimension: product ID, description, product
type
– Location Dimension: region, state, city.
– Time Dimension: year quarter, month, week and
date.
 Attributes Hierarchy

•Definition : AH provides a top-down data organization

•Used for aggregation and drill-down/roll-up data analysis.
•Example, location dimension attributes can be organized in a
hierarchy by region, state and city.
•AH provides the capability to perform drill-down and roll-up
searches.
•Allows the DW and OLAP systems to have defined path.
 A Concept Hierarchy: Dimension (location)

all all

region Europe ... North_America

country Germany ... Spain Canada ... Mexico

city Frankfurt ... Vancouver ... Toronto

office L. Chan ... M. Wind

 A Concept Hierarchy: Dimension (location)
Product Line Product Family Product Product Name
Category

Books Arts and Music Architecture High Top Almonds

Books Audiobooks Biographies Wild Swans: Three

Daughters of China

Books Audiobooks Childrens The Hobbit

Books Audiobooks Childrens Winnie The Pooh

Books Audiobooks Fiction The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn

Product_Line->Product_Family->Product_Category->Product_Name
 Multidimensional Data
• Sales volume as a function of
product, month,Dimensions:
and region Product, Location, Tim
Hierarchical summarization paths
on
gi

Industry Region Year

Re

Category Country Quarter

Product

Product City Month We

Office Day

Month
 A Sample Data Cube
Date Total annual sales
2Qtr of TV in U.S.A.
1Qtr 3Qtr 4Qtr sum
t
uc

TV
od

PC U.S.A
Pr

VCR
sum

Country
Canada

Mexico

sum
 Date A Sample Data Cube
t
uc

1Qtr 2Qtr 3Qtr 4Qtr

od

TV

Country
sum Total annual sales
Pr

PC
VCR U.S.A of TV in U.S.A.
sum
Canada
Mexico
sum
Essbase
Sales Manager Qtr1 Qtr2 Qtr3 Qtr4
Sales Sales Sales Sales
John New York 1000 1000 1000 1000
California 200 200 200 200
Texas 63446 63446 63446 63446
Ohio 6633 6633 6633 6633
Illnois 3466 3466 3466 3466
Qtr1 Qtr2 Qtr3 Qtr4
Mac New York
California
Texas
Ohio 300
Illnois
 Star Schema
• A single fact table and for each dimension one dimension table
• Does not capture hierarchies directly
• Example of Star Schema: Figure 1.6
 In the example, sales fact table is connected to
dimensions location, product, time and organization. It
shows that data can be sliced across all dimensions and
again it is possible for the data to be aggregated across
multiple dimensions. "Sales dollar" in sales fact table can
be calculated across all dimensions independently or in a
combined manner which is explained below.

 Sales dollar value for a particular product

 Sales dollar value for a product in a location
 Sales dollar value for a product in a year within a location
 Sales dollar value for a product in a year within a
location sold or serviced by an employee
 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
• Aggregation
Many OLAP queries involve aggregation of the data in the fact
table

• For example, to find the total sales (over time) of each product in
each market, we might use

SELECT S.Market_Id, S.Product_Id, SUM (S.Sales_Amt)

FROM Sales S
GROUP BY S.Market_Id, S.Product_Id

• The aggregation is over the entire time dimension and thus

produces a two-dimensional view of the data
 Aggregation Over Time

• The output of the previous query

Market_Id
SUM(Sales_Amt) M1 M2 M3 M4
P1 3003 1503 …
Product_Id

P2 6003 2402 …
P3 4503 3 …
P4 7503 7000 …
P5 … … …
 Typical OLAP Operations
• Roll up (drill-up): summarize data
– by climbing up 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)
 Drilling Down and Rolling Up
• Some dimension tables form an aggregation hierarchy
Market_Id → City → State → Region
• Executing a series of queries that moves down a hierarchy (e.g.,
from aggregation over regions to that over states) is called
drilling down
– Requires the use of the fact table or information more specific
than the requested aggregation (e.g., cities)
• Executing a series of queries that moves up the hierarchy (e.g.,
from states to regions) is called rolling up
 Drilling Down
Drilling down on market: from Region to State
Sales (Market_Id, Product_Id, Time_Id, Sales_Amt)
Market (Market_Id, City, State, Region)
• SELECT S.Product_Id, M.Region, SUM (S.Sales_Amt)
FROM Sales S, Market M
WHERE M.Market_Id = S.Market_Id
GROUP BY S.Product_Id, M.Region

• SELECT S.Product_Id, M.State, SUM (S.Sales_Amt)

FROM Sales S, Market M
WHERE M.Market_Id = S.Market_Id
GROUP BY S.Product_Id, M.State,
Rolling up on market, from State to Region
– If we have already created a table, State_Sales, using

1. SELECT S.Product_Id, M.State, SUM (S.Sales_Amt)

FROM Sales S, Market M
WHERE M.Market_Id = S.Market_Id
GROUP BY S.Product_Id, M.State
then we can roll up from there to:

2. SELECT T.Product_Id, M.Region, SUM (T.Sales_Amt)

FROM State_Sales T, Market M
WHERE M.State = T.State
GROUP BY T.Product_Id, M.Region
 Roll-up and Drill Down
Higher Level of
Aggregation

Sales Channel
Region

Drill-Down
Country
State
Roll Up

Location Address
Sales Representative

Low-level
Details
 “Slicing and Dicing”

The Telecomm Slice

Product

Household

Telecomm ns
o
e gi
R Europe
Video
Far East
Audio India

Retail Direct Special Sales Channel

 Snowflake Schema

• A snowflake schema is a term that describes a star schema

structure normalized through the use of outrigger tables. i.e
dimension table hierarchies are broken into simpler tables. In
star schema example we had 4 dimensions like location,
product, time, organization and a fact table (sales)
 Snowflake schema
• Represent dimensional hierarchy directly by normalizing tables.
• Easy to maintain and saves storage
Example of Snowflake Schema
 Example of Snowflake
time
Schema
item
time_key
day item_key supplier
day_of_the_week Sales Fact Table item_name supplier_key
month brand supplier_type
quarter time_key type
year item_key supplier_key

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_or_street
Measures country
 Questions??

Prepared By
Amit Sharma
Hyperion/OBIEE Trainer
learnhyperion.wordpress.com
Aloo_a2@yahoo.com