Extending the Multidimensional Model for Linking Cubes
Résumé
Data warehouses structure data in multidimensional cubes, where dimensions
specify different ways in which measures in facts may be viewed,
aggregated, and sorted. It is essential for data analysts to combine data from heterogeneous
multidimensional cubes to enhance their analysis capabilities. For
this, users are restricted in using only shared dimensions for navigating related
multidimensional cubes. In this paper, we show that this limits the analysis possibilities
and introduce an explicit link that relates two multidimensional cubes,
indicating that they represent different aspects of the same reality, and hence
they may be connected. We argue that the standard drill-across operator is not
suited to perform such operation, and we extend it by proposing a new operator
called drill-across-link.