Re: On what OLAP can and what OLAP can't


Bob Badour wrote:

That's inevitable when a crank and an ignorant converse.
What's inevitable is that an over the hill Fraud places himself as a
knowledgeable source of character judge when he was exposed as being an
ignorant of several concepts he tries to advocate.

Looking
back, I can see myself in years gone by being on either side of the
discussion, at different points in my career.

And your point would be?
His point is that he suspects a communication problem when it is not.
Idiot.

I can, if you like, shed some light on what the data architect might have
been trying to show you.

He was using imprecise terms to say laughable nonsense.
Won't argue on that. Even Frauds are right sometime.

I am sure there
are plenty of ignorants out there eager to interpret the oracle for us,
but in the end, it's all still gibberish.
Interpret is not exposing. I shared a conversation I had last week
when auditing a datawarehouse system down to its knees(response time,
correcteness of results) may trigger feedback, responses ideas. I am
positive this is not an uncommon situation or conversation. If you
consider as gibberish anything that does not integrate in your limited
field of perception, then you are disqualifying too much information to
pretend your scientific approach to data management is anything else
but an empty shell. Oservation is a part of science. Including data
management.

[Snipped]

Since the DA isn't here, I can't rephrase what you were trying to
communicate to the DA for that person. However, it's just vaguely possible
that the DA had been through the same learning curve you have, and had
grown to appreciate multidimensional modeling in addition to relational
model, rather than instead of it.


If you are seeking to genuinely understand how multidimensional modeling and
star schema design might be genuinely useful additions to your own set of
tools and methods, the discussion could go one way. If, on the other hand,
you are merely looking for validation of your own opinions, and want
justification for disregarding anything novel (to you) that the data
architect might have said, then the discussion is likely to go nowhere, as
many prior discussions in c.d.t. have.

Multidimensional modeling and star schemas have one advantage: the
industry hopped on that buzzword-laden bandwagon a few years ago so a
lot of applications and tools expect star schemas and lack facilities to
handle anything that doesn't fit that exact mold.
Multidimensional modeling has the advantage of concentrating
flexibility of querying capabilities into an applicative repository.
You could consider it as an applicative repository of querying
capabilities. Nevertherless, it can not compensate loss of integrity
and can not be placed on the same level of abstraction than RM.
Multidimensional is mainly an implementation model not a logical model.



Before I invest the time and effort at trying to summarize and explain the
benefits of star schema design, I want to have some inkling about whether
it's a waste of time.

Unless you can point to some brilliant theory that makes star schemas
particularly useful, it's a waste of time.
Star schemas implementations have one advantage. As aggregates are
*physically* stored, querying response times are improved on poor SQL
DBMS implementations (breaking at the same time independence). That is
the only one.

I will comment on a few things above:

[Snipped]

He is?!? Since when? Next you are going to try to tell us Won Kim is
worthy of respect.
Won't argue on that. Even Frauds are right sometime.

[Snipped]

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