Overview of the OLAP API Metadata

Multidimensional metadata model

The OLAP API provides a Java application with access to a multidimensional view of data in an Oracle database. The OLAP API design includes objects that are consistent with that view and are familiar to data warehousing and OLAP developers. For example, it has objects for measures, dimensions, hierachies, levels, and attributes. In this release, the OLAP API design incorporates an object-oriented model called MDM (multidimensional metadata). The OLAP API can also be extended to support other models.

The data in an Oracle database must be prepared by a database administrator in order to support the MDM model. Even though recent SQL enhancements have introduced some multidimensional objects, such as dimension, there are other objects and characteristics that must be added.

Data preparation

A database administrator starts with a data warehouse that is organized according to a star or snowflake schema. The schema specifies dimension tables as well as fact tables, which contain measures.

Using the OLAP management feature in Oracle Enterprise Manager, the administrator adds metadata to the data warehouse. The objects provided in this step supply the metadata required for OLAP Services to access the data. The metadata objects that are created in Oracle Enterprise Manager map to MDM metadata objects in the OLAP API.

Oracle Enterprise Manager is an administrative tool that is provided with Oracle. OLAP management is one of the choices offered within Oracle Enterprise Manager.

The topic,"OLAP Metadata Objects in Oracle Enterprise Manager" briefly describes the metadata that a database administrator prepares for use with OLAP Services.