OLAP++: Powerful and Easy-to-Use Federations of OLAP and Object Databases

On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) systems provide good performance and ease-of-use when retrieving summary information from very large amounts of data. However, the complex structures and relationships inherent in related non-summary data are not handled well by OLAP systems. In contrast, object database systems are built to handle such complexity, but do not support summary querying well. This paper presents OLAP++, a flexible, federated system that enables OLAP users to exploit simultaneously the features of OLAP and object database systems. In a previous paper [1], we have defined a comprehensive framework for handling federations of OLAP and object databases, including the SumQL++ language that allows OLAP systems to naturally support queries that refer to and retrieve data from object databases. The OLAP++ system allows data to be handled using the most appropriate data model and technology: OLAP systems for summary data and object database systems for the more complex, general data. Also, the need for physical integration of data is reduced considerably. We present a case study based on the Transaction Processing Council (TPC) TPC-R benchmark [3]. The system is implemented in C++ on top of the Object Protocol Model (OPM) system [4] and the Microsoft SQL Server OLAP Services system [2]. )HGHUDWLRQV RI 2/$3 DQG 2EMHFW 'DWDEDVHV