Information on OLAP Databases?

oh-lap asks: "One relatively new topic in computing that hasn't seen much mainstream press (yet) is OLAP or multidimensional databases. OLAP is based on the principle of organizing your data along a number of dimensions which can be pivoted and drilled into. OLAP sounds like a neat idea and represent an abstraction of several problems which I've seen tackled by custom coding jobs. The biggest problem with OLAP right now, seems to be a dire lack of expert knowledge in the area and no standardized API or query language for OLAP servers. But the lack of decent introductory reading material is particularly bothersome. If there are any experts (or even dabblers) in OLAP out there, what are the sources of information (books, websites, forums, webblogs, etc) that you go to for info about OLAP? The issues I'm interested in are wide ins scope and include everything from querying and data modeling to actual design of an OLAP server. Any pointers"

Comments

Re:Yukon - MS SQL Server 2003 new features

[omibus]

That is a bit simplistic. Probably the biggest advantage of OLAP over SQL servers (any of them) is SPEED! OLAP does agregation querys hundreds of times faster than SQL servers.

I've seen SQL querys that took hours to compute only take a matter of seconds for an olap cube.

But yes, OLAP is used for reporting, but really its strength lies in analysis, which means you are not relying on predefined reports.

This is actually a very old database idea.

[Linux_Bastard]

New as of 1968
Can anyone say MUMPS?

Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System.

MUMPS origin

The latest version of the MUMPS language/database is Cache

There is even a free version called GT/M

Sanchez GT/M

The story of MUMPS is actually a sad tale of a bad language with a great Database.

Origin in 1967
ISO standard 11756 (1991).
ANSI standard: "MUMPS Language Standard", X11.1 (1977, 1984, 1990)
Effectivly killed in the late 90's by Intersystems.

The hallmarks of M were the very terse sytax and fast eficient databases.

99 bottles of beer program example

R O,C,B,b U 0 F X B,O,C,B,C W "Take one down, pass it around,",! S b=b-1 X B,O W ".",! H:'b W !
W " on the wall"
W ",",!
H 1 W $S(b:b,1:"No more")_" bottle" W:b-1 "s" W " of beer"
99

My signature is a complete DSM program that prints out a formatted, justified report of all the prime numbers between 1 and 1000.