MULTIDIMENSIONAL DATABASES AND DATA WAREHOUSING

The present book s subject is multidimensional data models and data modeling concepts as they are applied in real data warehouses. The book aims to present the most important concepts within this subject in a precise and understandable manner. The book s coverage of fundamental concepts includes data cubes and their elements, such as dimensions, facts, and measures and their representation in a relational setting, it includes architecture-related concepts, and it includes the querying of multidimensional databases. The book also covers advanced multidimensional concepts that are considered to be particularly important. This coverage includes advanced dimension-related concepts such as slowly changing dimensions, degenerate and junk dimensions, outriggers, parent-child hierarchies, and unbalanced, non-covering, and non-strict hierarchies. The book offers a principled overview of key implementation techniques that are particularly important to multidimensional databases, including materialized views, bitmap indices, join indices, and star join processing. The book ends with a chapter that presents the literature on which the book is based and offers further readings for those readers who wish to engage in more in-depth study of specific aspects of the book s subject. Table of Contents