In computing, a data warehouse, also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for reporting and data analysis and is considered a core component of business intelligence. Data warehouses are central repositories of integrated data from one or more disparate sources. They store current and historical data in one single place that are used for creating reports. This is beneficial for companies as it enables them to interrogate and draw insights from their data and make decisions.
Denormalization is a strategy used on a previously-normalized database to increase performance. In computing, denormalization is the process of trying to improve the read performance of a database, at the expense of losing some write performance, by adding redundant copies of data or by grouping data. It is often motivated by performance or scalability in relational database software needing to carry out very large numbers of read operations. Denormalization differs from the unnormalized form in that denormalization benefits can only be fully realized on a data model that is otherwise normalized.
Online analytical processing, or OLAP, is an approach to answer multi-dimensional analytical (MDA) queries swiftly in computing. OLAP is part of the broader category of business intelligence, which also encompasses relational databases, report writing and data mining. Typical applications of OLAP include business reporting for sales, marketing, management reporting, business process management (BPM), budgeting and forecasting, financial reporting and similar areas, with new applications emerging, such as agriculture.
A data mart is a structure/access pattern specific to data warehouse environments, used to retrieve client-facing data. The data mart is a subset of the data warehouse and is usually oriented to a specific business line or team. Whereas data warehouses have an enterprise-wide depth, the information in data marts pertains to a single department. In some deployments, each department or business unit is considered the owner of its data mart including all the hardware, software and data. This enables each department to isolate the use, manipulation and development of their data. In other deployments where conformed dimensions are used, this business unit owner will not hold true for shared dimensions like customer, product, etc.
An OLAP cube is a multi-dimensional array of data. Online analytical processing (OLAP) is a computer-based technique of analyzing data to look for insights. The term cube here refers to a multi-dimensional dataset, which is also sometimes called a hypercube if the number of dimensions is greater than three.
In computing, the star schema or star model is the simplest style of data mart schema and is the approach most widely used to develop data warehouses and dimensional data marts. The star schema consists of one or more fact tables referencing any number of dimension tables. The star schema is an important special case of the snowflake schema, and is more effective for handling simpler queries.
Database design is the organization of data according to a database model. The designer determines what data must be stored and how the data elements interrelate. With this information, they can begin to fit the data to the database model. A database management system manages the data accordingly.
In data warehousing, a fact table consists of the measurements, metrics or facts of a business process. It is located at the center of a star schema or a snowflake schema surrounded by dimension tables. Where multiple fact tables are used, these are arranged as a fact constellation schema. A fact table typically has two types of columns: those that contain facts and those that are a foreign key 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. Fact tables contain the content of the data warehouse and store different types of measures like additive, non-additive, and semi-additive measures.
Essbase is a multidimensional database management system (MDBMS) that provides a platform upon which to build analytic applications. Essbase began as a product from Arbor Software, which merged with Hyperion Software in 1998. Oracle Corporation acquired Hyperion Solutions Corporation in 2007. Until late 2005 IBM also marketed an OEM version of Essbase as DB2 OLAP Server.
Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) is an online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining tool in Microsoft SQL Server. SSAS is used as a tool by organizations to analyze and make sense of information possibly spread out across multiple databases, or in disparate tables or files. Microsoft has included a number of services in SQL Server related to business intelligence and data warehousing. These services include Integration Services, Reporting Services and Analysis Services. Analysis Services includes a group of OLAP and data mining capabilities and comes in two flavors multidimensional and tabular, where the difference between the two is how the data is presented. In a tabular model, the information is arranged in two-dimensional tables which can thus be more readable for a human. A multidimensional model can contain information with many degrees of freedom, and must be unfolded to increase readability by a human.
A slowly changing dimension (SCD) in data management and data warehousing is a dimension which contains relatively static data which can change slowly but unpredictably, rather than according to a regular schedule. Some examples of typical slowly changing dimensions are entities such as names of geographical locations, customers, or products.
An entity–attribute–value model (EAV) is a data model optimized for the space-efficient storage of sparse—or ad-hoc—property or data values, intended for situations where runtime usage patterns are arbitrary, subject to user variation, or otherwise unforeseeable using a fixed design. The use-case targets applications which offer a large or rich system of defined property types, which are in turn appropriate to a wide set of entities, but where typically only a small, specific selection of these are instantiated for a given entity. Therefore, this type of data model relates to the mathematical notion of a sparse matrix. EAV is also known as object–attribute–value model, vertical database model, and open schema.
Dimensional modeling (DM) is part of the Business Dimensional Lifecycle methodology developed by Ralph Kimball which includes a set of methods, techniques and concepts for use in data warehouse design. The approach focuses on identifying the key business processes within a business and modelling and implementing these first before adding additional business processes, as a bottom-up approach. An alternative approach from Inmon advocates a top down design of the model of all the enterprise data using tools such as entity-relationship modeling (ER).
A database model is a type of data model that determines the logical structure of a database. It fundamentally determines in which manner data can be stored, organized and manipulated. The most popular example of a database model is the relational model, which uses a table-based format.
Datavault or data vault modeling is a database modeling method that is designed to provide long-term historical storage of data coming in from multiple operational systems. It is also a method of looking at historical data that deals with issues such as auditing, tracing of data, loading speed and resilience to change as well as emphasizing the need to trace where all the data in the database came from. This means that every row in a data vault must be accompanied by record source and load date attributes, enabling an auditor to trace values back to the source. The concept was published in 2000 by Dan Linstedt.
The dimensional fact model (DFM) is an ad hoc and graphical formalism specifically devised to support the conceptual modeling phase in a data warehouse project. DFM is extremely intuitive and can be used by analysts and non-technical users as well. A short-term working is sufficient to realize a clear and exhaustive representation of multidimensional concepts. It can be used from the initial data warehouse life-cycle steps, to rapidly devise a conceptual model to share with customers.
An aggregate is a type of summary used in dimensional models of data warehouses to shorten the time it takes to provide answers to typical queries on large sets of data. The reason why aggregates can make such a dramatic increase in the performance of a data warehouse is the reduction of the number of rows to be accessed when responding to a query.
The following is provided as an overview of and topical guide to databases:
The reverse star schema is a schema optimized for fast retrieval of large quantities of descriptive data. The design was derived from a warehouse star schema, and its adaptation for descriptive data required that certain key characteristics of the classic star schema be "reversed".
Cubes is a light-weight open source multidimensional modelling and OLAP toolkit for development reporting applications and browsing of aggregated data written in Python programming language released under the MIT License.
