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.