Introduction to OLAP and Dimensional Modelling

Tuesday

Overview: Tuesday
Format Lecture Description Introduction to OLAP and Analysis Services Demo 10:45 - 11:30 Dimensional modelling Lab 12:15 - 13:00 Practical session: Defining a data source and defining and deploying a cube Lab 13:00 - 13:45 Practical session: Modifying measures, attributes and hierarchies Lecture 14:30 - 15:15 Observations about design for OLAP and Reporting Discussion 15:15 - 16:00 Wrap-up: questions and feedback Time 10:00 - 10:45

Definition of OLAP
Fast Analysis of Shared Multidimensional Information (FASMI, Nigel Pendse)
Fast Analysis (statistical and business logic) Shared Multidimensional Information (all of the data and derived information needed)

Multidimensional
The system must provide a multidimensional conceptual view of the data, including full support for hierarchies and multiple hierarchies, as this is certainly the most logical way to analyze businesses and organizations.

Alternative definition of OLAP (from SAS)

OLAP is "fast access to large amounts of summarized data". This implies the concept of dimensionality. For without dimensions, there would be nothing to summarize the data by. Alternative definition is that OLAP provides: "the ability of users to conveniently interrogate large amounts of data, at varying levels of detail, across a variety of combinations of business dimensions"

Kimballs Four-Step Design Process

1. 2. 3. 4. Select a business process Declare the grain Choose dimensions Identify facts

STEP 1: Select a business process

For our exercise, we will be looking at Internet sales

A Quick Look at the Data (1)

USE AdventureWorksDW; SELECT TOP 5 CustomerKey, ProductKey, OrderDateKey, OrderQuantity FROM FactInternetSales

A Quick Look at the Data (2)

Customer Product OrderDate SalesAmount Key Key Key ----------- ---------- ------------ --------------------11003 346 1 3399.99 14501 336 1 699.0982 21768 310 1 3578.27 25863 346 1 3399.99 28389 346 1 3399.99

STEP 2: Declare the grain

(What does a row in the fact table mean?) In our example, a row is an individual order. Design rule: recognise the trade-off.
A finer grain facilitates more detailed analysis, but results in a larger quantity of data.

STEP 3: Choose dimensions

DimCustomer DimGeography DimProduct

DimTime

STEP 4: Identify facts

The numeric facts that we will measure FactInternetSales

DimCustomer
CustomerKey GeographyKey CustomerAlternateKey Title FirstName MiddleName LastName

FactInternetSales
ProductKey OrderDateKey DueDateKey ShipDateKey CustomerKey PromotionKey CurrencyKey SalesTerritoryKey

DimProduct
ProductKey ProductAlternateKey ProductSubcategoryKey WeightUnitMeasureCode SizeUnitMeasureCode EnglishProductName SpanishProductName FrenchProductName StandardCost

DimGeography
GeographyKey City StateProvinceCode StateProvinceName CountryRegionCode EnglishCountryRegionName SpanishCountryRegionNa... FrenchCountryRegionName

DimTime
TimeKey FullDateAlternateKey DayNumberOfWeek EnglishDayNameOfWeek SpanishDayNameOfWeek FrenchDayNameOfWeek DayNumberOfMonth

FinishedGoodsFlag Color SafetyStockLevel ReorderPoint ListPrice

Demo
Dimensional modelling

Lab
Defining a data source view Defining and deploying a cube

Lab
Practical session: Modifying measures, attributes and hierarchies

Lecture: Observations about design for OLAP and Reporting

The BI Bottleneck (1)

Report consumers
The report may be electronic, e.g. Excel

Power users
Capable of some self-service

Report authors
The know the data and the business.

Reporting administrator
They know the database and the data, but not necessarily how it relates to the business.

Challenge: make reporting more interactive so that changes can be accommodated without passing along the chain

The BI bottleneck (2)

Typically, analysts time is the scarce resource.
The number of iterations is the killer.

Sometimes, testing is the bottleneck. Possible solution: the analyst spends a bit more time in the first iteration providing the business user with a more generic/interactive report.

The BI Bottleneck (3)

Long lead times High development costs Apparently small changes to a requirement for a report take a long time to implement. For each link along the chain that a request for a change needs to go, delay goes up by a big factor.

The Relational Model of Data

Conceptually, homogeneous tabular structure:
Logic: for declarative query language Algebra: for query optimization Application interface (e.g. simple reporting tools). Applications designers and even some end-users can (just about) understand tables.

Relational model provided a mutually intelligible language for implementers, administrators, developers, researchers and even users. Flexible: join anything with anything (c.f. OLAP).

Inadequacy of the Relational Model for Reporting applications

Heterogeneous data sources:
Database, OLAP, XML Web services, etc.

Relational model does not fit well with the area between storage and presentation.
Aggregation hierarchies Matrix structures

The Microsoft approach: UDM

Server Analysis Services 2005 implements UDM. Acts as a bridge between users and their data. Encapsulates semantics, language and time. UDM perspectives allow the user to view subsets. Integrated with Data Mining. Accessed via SOAP and XML for Analysis.

UDM

A UDM provides a single dimensional model for all OLAP analysis and relational reporting needs. So you can use either MDX or SQL Perspectives are the new data marts Cubes are largely transparent concepts downgraded to the status of caches Commonly youll only have 1 cube with multiple measure groups and multiple perspectives. Its better to think of measure groups instead of cubes; partitions now apply to measure groups. Whilst a UDM can gather data from numerous data sources, the need to cleanse data still requires a data warehouse. A cube is structured around dimensional attributes (previously known as member properties) rather than dimensional hierarchies. Hence the virtual dimension, as a term, is now gone and concept converted to a real, first class, dimension. UDM has five new dimension types, Role Playing, Fact, Reference, Data Mining and Many to many.

The pre-UDM and UDM stacks

Pre-UDM stack
Dimension model (pivot table) Calculations (Excel) End-user model (if you are lucky) Data source view Management settings

UDM stack
Management settings End-user model Calculations Dimensional model Data source view

Enterprise BI with UDM

XML Web Service

OLAP Browser (1) OLAP Browser (2)

MOLAP

Datamart

UDM

Reporting Tool (1)

Reporting Tool (1) BI Applications

Datamart

DW

Desirable features of a BI data model

The model must facilitate
re-use of report spare-parts by the power users (rather than just the report authors). more flexibility for report consumers easier maintenance of the set of all reports used by an enterprise. (E.g. Avoiding the reporting chain.) Interaction.

Current design principles

All about how to make reports look good.
See, for example, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Report Design: Best Practices and Guidelines

Some focus on maintenance. No focus on re-use.

Wrap-Up
Questions Feedback