The Aggregate Awareness Decision

Bob Cohen
Sense Corp
October 2001

Presentation Overview

Introduction Overview of aggregate awareness Aggregate awareness in Business Objects RDBMS materialized views for aggregate awareness Examples of each architecture Architectural trade offs Q&A

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Introduction

About Bob Cohen Who is the target audience Contact Info

Sense Corp 17 Ramsgate Drive St Louis, MO 63132 bcohen@sensecorp.com

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What is Aggregate Awareness?

It is the ability to dynamically re-write SQL to the level of granularity needed to answer a business question Allows for faster querying speed
Document_Id Line_Item Customer_Id Dollars

Customer_Id Dollars

1,000,000 Rows
5

1,000 Rows

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Setting up Business Objects Aggregate Awareness

Create all tables, joins, and objects at the universe level

Specify all aggregate awareness objects

Define contexts

Specify join paths

Use aggregate navigation functionality

Specify incompatible objects

All aggregated facts physically created during extraction, transformation, and load (ETL)

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Business Objects Aggregate Awareness Example

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Materialized Views Overview

Increase the query speed of very large data sets Physically stores aggregated and joined data sets at the database level Can create both simple and complex views Different from traditional database views

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Materialized View Vendor Availability

Oracle Sybase Informix

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Simple vs. Complex Materialized Views

Simple views

Selects rows from only one table Cannot perform any joins, group by functions, or connect by functions Complete refresh of data required

Complex views

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Materialized Views Alter Execution Path RDBMS

Original Query

SQL

Optimizer Picks Best Cost Option

Query is rewritten

Query Result

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Setting up Materialized Views

Query re-write needs to be enabled at the database or session level Following permissions need to be set up for each user that can create a materialized view

Create materialized view Create table Create view Create index Unlimited or sufficient space

Each materialized view uses as much space as a physical table

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Setting up Materialized Views

To use the alter query execution path functionality, you must set up a dimension

The dimension sets a hierarchy for each related dimension

Each materialized view needs to be coded with a create statement on the database Analyze statistics in order for optimizer to recognize materialized views Can create an index on materialized view

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Materialized View Example

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Architectural Trade-Offs
Business Objects Code Location Metadata Objects created at the universe level Allows for centralized metadata repository Tables physically created through ETL process RDBMS

1-3

Manually coded at database level Metadata hidden in complex code

ETL

Materialized views created through code

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Architectural Trade-Offs
Business Objects Source Specific Can be used against any source RDBMS

2-3

RDBMS must support materialized views; if multiple sources, need to be maintained in each database

Re-Write Location

All code re-written before submitted to RDBMS

Re-written in RDBMS

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Architectural Trade-Offs
Business Objects RDBMS

3-3

Owner of the Code

Universe Designer or DBA DW architect

Yes No

Visible SQL

Universe Design Complexity

Yes

No

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Design Option 1
Do Not Implement any Aggregate Awareness

Keeps design simple Speed is not always a requirement Not all reporting requires aggregation Users know data well enough to know which tables to query

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Design Option 2
Implement Aggregate Awareness through BusinessObjects Exclusively

Ideal for architecture with many database sources

Not every database source supports materialized views Materialized views need to be maintained in every database source

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Design Option 2
SQL Server

BO Repository

Oracle 8i

MS Access

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Design Option 2
Implement Aggregate Awareness through BusinessObjects Exclusively

Need for centralized metadata repository Do not have access to a strong DBA Closed reporting architecture

Takes advantage of strong semantic layer in BusinessObjects

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Design Option 3
Implement Materialized Views in RDBMS

Implement materialized views in RDBMS

Ideal for architectures with many reporting tools

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Design Option 3
BO

Custom Report Application

Data Warehouse

MS Access

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Design Option 3
Implement Materialized Views in RDBMS

Need quick results Access to strong DBA Simplify universe design Have one or few sources Do not need a centralized metadata repository

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Design Option 4
Implement Both Materialized Views in RBDMS and Aggregate Awareness in BusinessObjects

Willing to deal with complexity Recognizes advantages in both approaches Able to define advantages for each architecture

Use materialized views for refreshing list of values

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Design Option 4

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Q&A

Which approach is best for you

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