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The course is given during the first semester
Relational and object-oriented databases are mainly suited for operational settings in which there are many small transactions querying and writing to the database. Consistency of the database (in the presence of potentially conflicting transactions) is of utmost importance. Much different is the situation in analytical processing where historical data is analyzed and aggregated in many different ways. Such queries differ significantly from the typical transactional queries in the relational model:
For these reasons, data to be analyzed is typically collected into a data warehouse with Online Analytical Processing support. Online here refers to the fact that the answers to the queries should not take too long to be computed. Collecting the data is often referred to as Extract-Transform-Load (ELT). The data in the data warehouse needs to be organized in a way to enable the analytical queries to be executed efficiently. For the relational model star and snowflake schemes are popular designs. Next to OLAP on top of a relational database (ROLAP), also native OLAP solutions based on multidimensional structures (MOLAP) exist. In order to further improve query answering efficiency, some query results can already be materialized in the database, and new indexing techniques have been developped.
In the course, the main concepts of multidimensional databases will be covered and illustrated using the SQL Server tools. Complimentary to the course, IBM and Teradata will give invited lectures.
The following materials have been used to construct the course material, but are not required reading for the course:
All software used in the course is available in the computer labs. Students who wish a personal copy of the software on their own computers, can get free copies of the software. Succinct instructions to acquire the software have been included below; in case additional help is required you can contact the sysadmin of the department: Arthur Lesuisse alesuiss@ulb.ac.be
The assignment is carried out in groups of 3 to 4 people. Before you can submit assignment part I, you will have to register in a group. The link to register a group is included below. Please to select your group before or on 25/10/2018.
The assignment consist of 2 parts:
Assignment part I will be available on 25/10. For the next parts, assignment II will become available right after the submission deadline of assignment part I. The submission deadlines for parts I and II are strict.
The assignment evaluation will count for 30% of your total grade. This may seem undervalued, however, putting effort in the assignment will definitely help you in achieving a better understanding of the course material which will result in a better score in the paper exam which amounts for 70% of the grade.