Unit 3: Data Warehouse

 What is a data warehouse?

 A multi-dimensional data model

 Data warehouse architecture

 Data warehouse implementation

 From data warehousing to data mining

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 1

 What is Data Warehouse?
 Defined in many different ways, but not rigorously.
 A decision support database that is maintained separately from
the organization’s operational database
 Support information processing by providing a solid platform of
consolidated, historical data for analysis.
 “A data warehouse is a subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant,
and nonvolatile collection of data in support of management’s
decision-making process.”—W. H. Inmon
 Data warehousing:
 The process of constructing and using data warehouses

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 2

 Data Warehouse—Subject-Oriented

 Organized around major subjects, such as customer,

product, sales
 Focusing on the modeling and analysis of data for
decision makers, not on daily operations or transaction
processing
 Provide a simple and concise view around particular
subject issues by excluding data that are not useful in
the decision support process

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 3

 Data Warehouse—Integrated
 Constructed by integrating multiple, heterogeneous data
sources
 relational databases, flat files, on-line transaction

records
 Data cleaning and data integration techniques are
applied.
 Ensure consistency in naming conventions, encoding

structures, attribute measures, etc. among different

data sources
 E.g., Hotel price: currency, tax, breakfast covered, etc.
 When data is moved to the warehouse, it is
converted.

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 4

 Data Warehouse—Time Variant
 The time horizon for the data warehouse is significantly
longer than that of operational systems
 Operational database: current value data
 Data warehouse data: provide information from a
historical perspective (e.g., past 5-10 years)
 Every key structure in the data warehouse
 Contains an element of time, explicitly or implicitly
 But the key of operational data may or may not
contain “time element”

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 5

 Data Warehouse—Nonvolatile
 A physically separate store of data transformed from the
operational environment
 Operational update of data does not occur in the data
warehouse environment
 Does not require transaction processing, recovery,
and concurrency control mechanisms
 Requires only two operations in data accessing:
 initial loading of data and access of data

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 6

 Data Warehouse vs. Heterogeneous DBMS

 Traditional heterogeneous DB integration: A query driven approach

 Build wrappers/mediators on top of heterogeneous databases

 When a query is posed to a client site, a meta-dictionary is used

to translate the query into queries appropriate for individual
heterogeneous sites involved, and the results are integrated into
a global answer set

 Complex information filtering, compete for resources

 Data warehouse: update-driven, high performance

 Information from heterogeneous sources is integrated in advance

and stored in warehouses for direct query and analysis

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 7

 Data Warehouse vs. Operational DBMS
 OLTP (on-line transaction processing)
 Major task of traditional relational DBMS
 Day-to-day operations: purchasing, inventory, banking,
manufacturing, payroll, registration, accounting, etc.
 OLAP (on-line analytical processing)
 Major task of data warehouse system
 Data analysis and decision making
 Distinct features (OLTP vs. OLAP):
 User and system orientation: customer vs. market
 Data contents: current, detailed vs. historical, consolidated
 Database design: ER + application vs. star + subject
 View: current, local vs. evolutionary, integrated
 Access patterns: update vs. read-only but complex queries
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 8
 OLTP vs. OLAP
OLTP OLAP
users clerk, IT professional knowledge worker
function day to day operations decision support
DB design application-oriented subject-oriented
data current, up-to-date historical,
detailed, flat relational summarized, multidimensional
isolated integrated, consolidated
usage repetitive ad-hoc
access read/write lots of scans
index/hash on prim. key
unit of work short, simple transaction complex query
# records accessed tens millions
#users thousands hundreds
DB size 100MB-GB 100GB-TB
metric transaction throughput query throughput, response

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 9

 Why Separate Data Warehouse?
 High performance for both systems
 DBMS— tuned for OLTP: access methods, indexing, concurrency
control, recovery
 Warehouse—tuned for OLAP: complex OLAP queries,
multidimensional view, consolidation
 Different functions and different data:
 missing data: Decision support requires historical data which
operational DBs do not typically maintain
 data consolidation: DS requires consolidation (aggregation,
summarization) of data from heterogeneous sources
 data quality: different sources typically use inconsistent data
representations, codes and formats which have to be reconciled
 Note: There are more and more systems which perform OLAP
analysis directly on relational databases
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 10
 Chapter 3: Data Warehousing and
OLAP Technology: An Overview

 What is a data warehouse?

 A multi-dimensional data model

 Data warehouse architecture

 Data warehouse implementation

 From data warehousing to data mining

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 11

 From Tables and Spreadsheets to Data Cubes
 A data warehouse is based on a multidimensional data model which
views data in the form of a data cube
 A data cube, such as sales, allows data to be modeled and viewed in
multiple dimensions
 Dimension tables, such as item (item_name, brand, type), or
time(day, week, month, quarter, year)
 Fact table contains measures (such as dollars_sold) and keys to
each of the related dimension tables
 In data warehousing literature, an n-D base cube is called a base
cuboid. The top most 0-D cuboid, which holds the highest-level of
summarization, is called the apex cuboid. The lattice of cuboids
forms a data cube.
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 12
 Cube: A Lattice of Cuboids
all
0-D(apex) cuboid

time item location supplier

1-D cuboids

time,location item,location location,supplier

time,item 2-D cuboids
time,supplier item,supplier

time,location,supplier
3-D cuboids
time,item,location
time,item,supplier item,location,supplier

4-D(base) cuboid
time, item, location, supplier

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 13

 Conceptual Modeling of Data Warehouses
 Modeling data warehouses: dimensions & measures
 Star schema: A fact table in the middle connected to a
set of dimension tables
 Snowflake schema: A refinement of star schema
where some dimensional hierarchy is normalized into a
set of smaller dimension tables, forming a shape
similar to snowflake
 Fact constellations: Multiple fact tables share
dimension tables, viewed as a collection of stars,
therefore called galaxy schema or fact constellation

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 14

 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 state_or_province
country
avg_sales
Measures

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 15

 Example of Snowflake Schema
time
time_key item
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
branch_type
dollars_sold city
city_key
avg_sales city
state_or_province
Measures country

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 16

 Example of Fact Constellation
time
time_key item Shipping Fact Table
day item_key
day_of_the_week Sales Fact Table item_name time_key
month brand
quarter time_key type item_key
year supplier_type shipper_key
item_key
branch_key from_location

branch location_key location to_location

branch_key location_key dollars_cost
branch_name
units_sold
street
branch_type dollars_sold city units_shipped
province_or_state
avg_sales country shipper
Measures shipper_key
shipper_name
location_key
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques shipper_type 17
 Cube Definition Syntax (BNF) in DMQL

 Cube Definition (Fact Table)

define cube <cube_name> [<dimension_list>]:
<measure_list>
 Dimension Definition (Dimension Table)
define dimension <dimension_name> as
(<attribute_or_subdimension_list>)
 Special Case (Shared Dimension Tables)
 First time as “cube definition”

 define dimension <dimension_name> as

<dimension_name_first_time> in cube
<cube_name_first_time>

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 18

 Defining Star Schema in DMQL

define cube sales_star [time, item, branch, location]:

dollars_sold = sum(sales_in_dollars), avg_sales =
avg(sales_in_dollars), units_sold = count(*)
define dimension time as (time_key, day, day_of_week,
month, quarter, year)
define dimension item as (item_key, item_name, brand,
type, supplier_type)
define dimension branch as (branch_key, branch_name,
branch_type)
define dimension location as (location_key, street, city,
province_or_state, country)

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 19

 Defining Snowflake Schema in DMQL

define cube sales_snowflake [time, item, branch, location]:

dollars_sold = sum(sales_in_dollars), avg_sales =
avg(sales_in_dollars), units_sold = count(*)
define dimension time as (time_key, day, day_of_week, month, quarter,
year)
define dimension item as (item_key, item_name, brand, type,
supplier(supplier_key, supplier_type))
define dimension branch as (branch_key, branch_name, branch_type)
define dimension location as (location_key, street, city(city_key,
province_or_state, country))

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 20

 Defining Fact Constellation in DMQL
define cube sales [time, item, branch, location]:
dollars_sold = sum(sales_in_dollars), avg_sales =
avg(sales_in_dollars), units_sold = count(*)
define dimension time as (time_key, day, day_of_week, month, quarter, year)
define dimension item as (item_key, item_name, brand, type, supplier_type)
define dimension branch as (branch_key, branch_name, branch_type)
define dimension location as (location_key, street, city, province_or_state,
country)
define cube shipping [time, item, shipper, from_location, to_location]:
dollar_cost = sum(cost_in_dollars), unit_shipped = count(*)
define dimension time as time in cube sales
define dimension item as item in cube sales
define dimension shipper as (shipper_key, shipper_name, location as location
in cube sales, shipper_type)
define dimension from_location as location in cube sales
define dimension to_location as location in cube sales

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 21

 Measures of Data Cube: Three Categories

 Distributive: if the result derived by applying the function

to n aggregate values is the same as that derived by
applying the function on all the data without partitioning
 E.g., count(), sum(), min(), max()
 Algebraic: if it can be computed by an algebraic function
with M arguments (where M is a bounded integer), each of
which is obtained by applying a distributive aggregate
function
 E.g., avg(), min_N(), standard_deviation()
 Holistic: if there is no constant bound on the storage size
needed to describe a subaggregate.
 E.g., median(), mode(), rank()
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 22
 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

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 23

 View of Warehouses and Hierarchies

Specification of hierarchies
 Schema hierarchy
day < {month <
quarter; week} < year
 Set_grouping hierarchy
{1..10} < inexpensive

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 24

 Multidimensional Data

 Sales volume as a function of product, month,

and region
Dimensions: Product, Location, Time
Hierarchical summarization paths

Industry Region Year

Category Country Quarter

Product

Product City Month Week

Office Day

Month
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 25
 A Sample Data Cube
Total annual sales
Date of TV in U.S.A.
1Qtr 2Qtr 3Qtr 4Qtr sum
TV
PC U.S.A
VCR

Country
sum
Canada

Mexico

sum

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 26

 Cuboids Corresponding to the Cube

all
0-D(apex) cuboid
product date country
1-D cuboids

product,date product,country date, country

2-D cuboids

3-D(base) cuboid
product, date, country

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 27

 Browsing a Data Cube

 Visualization
 OLAP capabilities
 Interactive manipulation
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 28
 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)

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 29

Fig. 3.10 Typical OLAP
Operations

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 30

 A Star-Net Query Model
Customer Orders
Shipping Method
Customer
CONTRACTS
AIR-EXPRESS

ORDER
TRUCK
PRODUCT LINE
Time Product
ANNUALY QTRLY DAILY PRODUCT ITEM PRODUCT GROUP
CITY
SALES PERSON
COUNTRY
DISTRICT

REGION
DIVISION
Location Each circle is
called a footprint Promotion Organization
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 31
 Chapter 3: Data Warehousing and
OLAP Technology: An Overview

 What is a data warehouse?

 A multi-dimensional data model

 Data warehouse architecture

 Data warehouse implementation

 From data warehousing to data mining

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 32

 Design of Data Warehouse: A Business
Analysis Framework
 Four views regarding the design of a data warehouse
 Top-down view
 allows selection of the relevant information necessary for the
data warehouse
 Data source view
 exposes the information being captured, stored, and
managed by operational systems
 Data warehouse view
 consists of fact tables and dimension tables
 Business query view
 sees the perspectives of data in the warehouse from the view
of end-user
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 33
 Data Warehouse Design Process
 Top-down, bottom-up approaches or a combination of both
 Top-down: Starts with overall design and planning (mature)
 Bottom-up: Starts with experiments and prototypes (rapid)
 From software engineering point of view
 Waterfall: structured and systematic analysis at each step before
proceeding to the next
 Spiral: rapid generation of increasingly functional systems, short
turn around time, quick turn around
 Typical data warehouse design process
 Choose a business process to model, e.g., orders, invoices, etc.
 Choose the grain (atomic level of data) of the business process
 Choose the dimensions that will apply to each fact table record
 Choose the measure that will populate each fact table record
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 34
 Data Warehouse: A Multi-Tiered Architecture

Monitor
& OLAP Server
Other Metadata
sources Integrator

Analysis
Operational Extract Query
DBs Transform Data Serve Reports
Load
Refresh
Warehouse Data mining

Data Marts

Data Sources Data Storage OLAP Engine Front-End Tools

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 35
 Three Data Warehouse Models
 Enterprise warehouse
 collects all of the information about subjects spanning

the entire organization

 Data Mart
 a subset of corporate-wide data that is of value to a

specific groups of users. Its scope is confined to

specific, selected groups, such as marketing data mart
 Independent vs. dependent (directly from warehouse) data mart
 Virtual warehouse
 A set of views over operational databases

 Only some of the possible summary views may be

materialized
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 36
 Data Warehouse Development:
A Recommended Approach
Multi-Tier Data
Warehouse
Distributed
Data Marts

Data Data Enterprise

Data
Mart Mart
Warehouse

Model refinement Model refinement

Define a high-level corporate data model

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 37
 Data Warehouse Back-End Tools and Utilities
 Data extraction
 get data from multiple, heterogeneous, and external
sources
 Data cleaning
 detect errors in the data and rectify them when possible

 Data transformation
 convert data from legacy or host format to warehouse
format
 Load
 sort, summarize, consolidate, compute views, check
integrity, and build indicies and partitions
 Refresh
 propagate the updates from the data sources to the
warehouse
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 38
 Metadata Repository
 Meta data is the data defining warehouse objects. It stores:
 Description of the structure of the data warehouse
 schema, view, dimensions, hierarchies, derived data defn, data
mart locations and contents
 Operational meta-data
 data lineage (history of migrated data and transformation path),
currency of data (active, archived, or purged), monitoring
information (warehouse usage statistics, error reports, audit trails)
 The algorithms used for summarization
 The mapping from operational environment to the data warehouse
 Data related to system performance
 warehouse schema, view and derived data definitions

 Business data
 business terms and definitions, ownership of data, charging policies
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 39
 OLAP Server Architectures
 Relational OLAP (ROLAP)
 Use relational or extended-relational DBMS to store and manage
warehouse data and OLAP middle ware
 Include optimization of DBMS backend, implementation of
aggregation navigation logic, and additional tools and services
 Greater scalability
 Multidimensional OLAP (MOLAP)
 Sparse array-based multidimensional storage engine
 Fast indexing to pre-computed summarized data
 Hybrid OLAP (HOLAP) (e.g., Microsoft SQLServer)
 Flexibility, e.g., low level: relational, high-level: array
 Specialized SQL servers (e.g., Redbricks)
 Specialized support for SQL queries over star/snowflake schemas
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 40
 Chapter 3: Data Warehousing and
OLAP Technology: An Overview

 What is a data warehouse?

 A multi-dimensional data model

 Data warehouse architecture

 Data warehouse implementation

 From data warehousing to data mining

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 41

 Efficient Data Cube Computation

 Data cube can be viewed as a lattice of cuboids

 The bottom-most cuboid is the base cuboid
 The top-most cuboid (apex) contains only one cell
 How many cuboids in an n-dimensional cube with L
levels? n
T   ( Li 1)
i 1
 Materialization of data cube
 Materialize every (cuboid) (full materialization), none
(no materialization), or some (partial materialization)
 Selection of which cuboids to materialize
 Based on size, sharing, access frequency, etc.
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 42
 Cube Operation

 Cube definition and computation in DMQL

define cube sales[item, city, year]: sum(sales_in_dollars)
compute cube sales
 Transform it into a SQL-like language (with a new operator
cube by, introduced by Gray et al.’96) ()
SELECT item, city, year, SUM (amount)
FROM SALES (city) (item) (year)

CUBE BY item, city, year

 Need compute the following Group-Bys
(city, item) (city, year) (item, year)
(date, product, customer),
(date,product),(date, customer), (product, customer),
(date), (product), (customer) (city, item, year)
()
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 43
 Iceberg Cube
 Computing only the cuboid cells whose
count or other aggregates satisfying the
condition like
HAVING COUNT(*) >= minsup
 Motivation
 Only a small portion of cube cells may be “above the

water’’ in a sparse cube

 Only calculate “interesting” cells—data above certain

threshold
 Avoid explosive growth of the cube

 Suppose 100 dimensions, only 1 base cell. How many

aggregate cells if count >= 1? What about count >= 2?
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 44
 Indexing OLAP Data: Bitmap Index
 Index on a particular column
 Each value in the column has a bit vector: bit-op is fast
 The length of the bit vector: # of records in the base table
 The i-th bit is set if the i-th row of the base table has the value for
the indexed column
 not suitable for high cardinality domains

Base table Index on Region Index on Type

Cust Region Type RecIDAsia Europe America RecID Retail Dealer
C1 Asia Retail 1 1 0 0 1 1 0
C2 Europe Dealer 2 0 1 0 2 0 1
C3 Asia Dealer 3 1 0 0 3 0 1
C4 America Retail 4 0 0 1 4 1 0
C5 Europe Dealer 5 0 1 0 5 0 1
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 45
 Indexing OLAP Data: Join Indices
 Join index: JI(R-id, S-id) where R (R-id, …)  S
(S-id, …)
 Traditional indices map the values to a list of
record ids
 It materializes relational join in JI file and

speeds up relational join

 In data warehouses, join index relates the values
of the dimensions of a start schema to rows in
the fact table.
 E.g. fact table: Sales and two dimensions city

and product
 A join index on city maintains for each

distinct city a list of R-IDs of the tuples

recording the Sales in the city
 Join indices can span multiple dimensions

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 46

 Efficient Processing OLAP Queries
 Determine which operations should be performed on the available cuboids
 Transform drill, roll, etc. into corresponding SQL and/or OLAP operations,
e.g., dice = selection + projection
 Determine which materialized cuboid(s) should be selected for OLAP op.
 Let the query to be processed be on {brand, province_or_state} with the
condition “year = 2004”, and there are 4 materialized cuboids available:
1) {year, item_name, city}
2) {year, brand, country}
3) {year, brand, province_or_state}
4) {item_name, province_or_state} where year = 2004
Which should be selected to process the query?
 Explore indexing structures and compressed vs. dense array structs in MOLAP
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 47
 Chapter 3: Data Warehousing and
OLAP Technology: An Overview

 What is a data warehouse?

 A multi-dimensional data model

 Data warehouse architecture

 Data warehouse implementation

 From data warehousing to data mining

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 48

 Data Warehouse Usage
 Three kinds of data warehouse applications
 Information processing
 supports querying, basic statistical analysis, and reporting
using crosstabs, tables, charts and graphs
 Analytical processing
 multidimensional analysis of data warehouse data
 supports basic OLAP operations, slice-dice, drilling, pivoting
 Data mining
 knowledge discovery from hidden patterns
 supports associations, constructing analytical models,
performing classification and prediction, and presenting the
mining results using visualization tools

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 49

 From On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP)
to On Line Analytical Mining (OLAM)
 Why online analytical mining?
 High quality of data in data warehouses

 DW contains integrated, consistent, cleaned data

 Available information processing structure surrounding

data warehouses
 ODBC, OLEDB, Web accessing, service facilities,

reporting and OLAP tools

 OLAP-based exploratory data analysis

 Mining with drilling, dicing, pivoting, etc.

 On-line selection of data mining functions

 Integration and swapping of multiple mining

functions, algorithms, and tasks

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 50
 An OLAM System Architecture
Mining query Mining result Layer4
User Interface
User GUI API
Layer3
OLAM OLAP
Engine Engine OLAP/OLAM

Data Cube API

Layer2
MDDB Meta Data
MDDB
Meta Data

Filtering & Integration Database API Filtering

Layer1
Data cleaning
Databases
Database Data warehouse Data
Data integration Repository
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 51
 Chapter 3: Data Warehousing and
OLAP Technology: An Overview
 What is a data warehouse?

 A multi-dimensional data model

 Data warehouse architecture

 Data warehouse implementation

 From data warehousing to data mining

 Summary
September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 52
 Summary: Data Warehouse and OLAP Technology

 Why data warehousing?

 A multi-dimensional model of a data warehouse
 Star schema, snowflake schema, fact constellations
 A data cube consists of dimensions & measures
 OLAP operations: drilling, rolling, slicing, dicing and pivoting
 Data warehouse architecture
 OLAP servers: ROLAP, MOLAP, HOLAP
 Efficient computation of data cubes
 Partial vs. full vs. no materialization
 Indexing OALP data: Bitmap index and join index
 OLAP query processing
 From OLAP to OLAM (on-line analytical mining)

September 6, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 53