Automatic Synthesis and Presentation of OLAP Cubes from Semantically Enriched Data Sources

• US 20120179644A1
• Filed: 07/11/2011
• Published: 07/12/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 07/09/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Daniel Paul Miranker
• Original Assignee: Daniel Paul Miranker
• Inventors: Miranker, Daniel Paul
• Granted Patent: US 9,495,429 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/605
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/211 Schema design and management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/254 Extract, transform and load [ETL] procedures, e.g. ETL data flows in data warehouses
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/258 Data format conversion from or to a database
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/283 Multi-dimensional databases or data warehouses, e.g. MOLAP or ROLAP
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9024 Graphs; Linked lists G06F16/9027 takes precedence

Abstract

This system comprises methods that simplify the creation of multidimensional OLAP models from one or more semantically enabled data sources. The system also comprises methods enabling interoperability between existing OLAP end-user interfaces, the system'"'"'s representation of OLAP and the underlying data sources. This includes web-enabled OLAP interfaces.

Claims

1. A method of accessing data executed by one or more computers comprising:

Creating a data structure representing a mapping from the ontological representation of an arbitrary relational schema to an ontology in the generic form of ontologies derived from star schema; and

Storing the data structure on one or more memory storage devices.

8. A system adapted to execute any of the methods of claims 1-6.

9. A computer readable medium comprising encoded program code that when executed by a computer system causes the computer system to execute any of the methods of claims 1-6.

2. A method of accessing data executed by one or more computers comprising:

Determining the ontological representation of a first relational database;

Receiving data representing a selection of facts, dimensions or their attributes from the determined ontological representation and their correspondence to facts, dimensions or their attributes of a pre-determined star schema ontology template in order to populate a specific instance of the star schema template;

Storing the received data; and

Initializing an OLAP definition of an OLAP cube using the populated star schema template.

3. A method of accessing data on a first relational database executed by one or more computers comprising:

Receiving a database query from an OLAP system; and

Translating the received query to a graph query language representation using a populated star schema template.

4. A method of claim 3 further comprising:

Translating the graph query language representation to another query representation that corresponds to the first relational database schema using the ontological representation of the first relational database; and

Submitting the translated corresponding query to the first relational database.

5. A method of accessing data on a first relational database executed by one or more computers comprising:

initializing an OLAP definition of an OLAP cube using a populated star schema template derived from a correspondence between an ontological representation of a first relational database and the attributes of the star schema template.

6. A method of presenting arbitrary data sources in an OLAP representation, executed by one or more computers, comprising:

Receiving data from at least one data sources;

Determining a semantic representation corresponding to the at least one data sources;

Generating a Hierarchical schema that incorporates all of the at least one data sources;

Displaying an OLAP representation of the at least one data sources where the representation is organized in accordance with the generated hierarchical schema.

7. A system for presenting to users data from arbitrary data sources through an OLAP representation comprising:

A semantic enablement module that receives data from data sources;

A Hierarchical Schema Generating module operatively connected to the Semantic Enabling module and a Runtime module;

A Runtime module that is operatively connected to the Semantic Enablement module and the Hierarchical Schema Generating module; and

A OLAP presentation module operatively connected to the Runtime module and a computer output device.