Overview of the OLAP API Metadata

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, hierarchies, levels, and attributes. The OLAP API design incorporates an object-oriented model called MDM (multidimensional metadata).

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 certain specifications. For example, it might conform to a star schema. The requirements are described in the Oracle9i OLAP User's Guide.

Metadata Preparation

Using the OLAP Metadata APIs, the administrator adds OLAP metadata to the data warehouse. The OLAP metadata objects, which are created in this step, supply the metadata required for Oracle OLAP to access the data. These OLAP metadata objects map to MDM metadata objects in the OLAP API.

The topic "OLAP Metadata Objects" briefly describes the OLAP metadata objects that a database administrator prepares for use with Oracle OLAP.