STREAMING MULTIDIMENSIONAL DATA BY BYPASSING MULTIDIMENSIONAL QUERY PROCESSOR

• US 20080301086A1
• Filed: 06/19/2007
• Published: 12/04/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 05/31/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: LinkedIn Corporation (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Cognos Incorporated (International Business Machines Corporation)
• Inventors: Gupta, Sanjeev Kumar
• Granted Patent: US 7,792,784 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/2
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/283 Multi-dimensional databases or data warehouses, e.g. MOLAP or ROLAP
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/957 Multidimensional

Abstract

A data warehouse comprises a multidimensional data storage area to store multidimensional data and a transactional data storage area to store underlying transactional data from which the multidimensional data is generated. The data warehouse also comprises a multidimensional query processor to provide one or more interfaces to issue a first set of queries conforming to one or more multidimensional query languages to retrieve the multidimensional data from the multidimensional data storage area. Furthermore, the data warehouse comprises a dynamic query engine to provide an additional interface to issue a second set of queries that bypass the interfaces provided by the multidimensional query processor to retrieve the transactional data from the transactional data storage area, wherein the second set of queries do not conform to any of the one or more multidimensional query languages.

Claims

1. A data warehouse comprising:

a multidimensional data storage area to store multidimensional data;

a transactional data storage area to store underlying transactional data from which the multidimensional data is generated;

a multidimensional query processor to provide one or more interfaces to issue a first set of queries conforming to one or more multidimensional query languages to retrieve the multidimensional data from the multidimensional data storage area; and

a dynamic query engine to provide an additional interface to issue a second set of queries that bypass the interfaces provided by the multidimensional query processor to retrieve the transactional data from the transactional data storage area, wherein the second set of queries do not conform to any of the one or more multidimensional query languages.

2. The data warehouse of claim 1, wherein the second set of queries bypass the interfaces provided by the multidimensional query processor to retrieve metadata directly from the transactional data storage area and metadata from the multidimensional data storage area.

3. The data warehouse of claim 1, further comprising a gateway server to transmit the results of the second set of queries through a network.

4. The data warehouse of claim 3, wherein the gateway server implements a chunking protocol to transmit the results of the second set of queries as a series of discrete chunks of data.

5. The data warehouse of claim 4, wherein the gateway server implements the chunking protocol as an application layer (layer seven) application of the Open Systems Interconnection (“

OSI”

) networking model.

6. The data warehouse of claim 3, wherein the gateway server transmits the results as a real-time stream of events that indicate incremental changes to the transaction data.

7. The data warehouse of claim 6,

wherein the data warehouse comprises a data warehouse for an enterprise software system,

wherein the transactional data comprises enterprise data representing enterprise activities, and

wherein the stream of events represents real-time changes to the enterprise data in response to the enterprise activities.

8. The data warehouse of claim 1, further comprising a data table, wherein the data table includes a first column to store identifiers of network devices and a second column to store queries associated with the identifiers of the network devices.

9. The data warehouse of claim 1, wherein the additional interface provided by the dynamic query engine is a Structured Query Language (“

SQL”

) interface.

10. The data warehouse of claim 9, wherein the dynamic query engine includes a query translator to translate SQL queries into OpenSQL queries.

11. The data warehouse of claim 1, wherein the data warehouse comprises the SAP Business Information Warehouse.

12. The data warehouse of claim 11, wherein the multidimensional query processor comprises a Multidimensional Expressions (“

MDX”

) processor.

13. The data warehouse of claim 11, wherein the multidimensional query processor comprises an SAP Business Explorer (“

BEX”

) processor.

14. A method comprising:

installing a dynamic query engine on a data warehouse, wherein the data warehouse includes transactional data in a transactional data storage area and multidimensional data generated from the transactional data in a multidimensional data storage area, and further wherein the data warehouse includes one or more interfaces for issuing a first set of queries conforming to the one or more multidimensional query languages to query the multidimensional data;

providing, with the dynamic query engine, an additional interface that issues a second set of queries that bypass the interfaces provided by the multidimensional query processor, wherein the second set of queries do not conform to any of the one or more multidimensional query languages;

retrieving, with the additional interface of the dynamic query engine, the transactional data from the transactional data storage area according to the second set of queries; and

streaming the retrieved transactional data on a network

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising retrieving, with the additional interface of the dynamic query engine, metadata from the transactional data storage area and metadata from the multidimensional data storage area.

16. The method of claim 14, wherein streaming includes transmitting, with a gateway server operating at an application layer (layer seven) of the Open Systems Interconnection (“

OSI”

) networking model, the results of the second set of queries through the network.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein transmitting comprises:

separating the results of the second set of queries into a plurality of chunks of application layer data; and

sending each of the chunks individually through the network according to a chunking protocol.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein transmitting comprises transmitting according to the transmission control protocol/internet protocol (“

TCP/IP”

).

19. The method of claim 14, further comprising storing in a data table, the second set of queries and an identifier which identifies a recipient of the results of the second set of queries.

20. The method of claim 14, wherein providing an additional interface comprises providing a Structured Query Language (“

SQL”

) interface.

21. The method of claim 20, further comprising:

receiving SQL queries, wherein the SQL queries are the second set of queries; and

translating the SQL queries into OpenSQL queries.

22. A system comprising:

a data warehouse comprising;

a multidimensional data storage area to store multidimensional data,

a transactional data storage area to store underlying transactional data from which the multidimensional data is generated,

a multidimensional query processor to provide one or more interfaces to issue a first set of queries conforming to one or more multidimensional query languages to retrieve the multidimensional data from the multidimensional data storage area, and

a dynamic query engine to provide an additional interface to issue a second set of queries that bypass the interfaces provided by the multidimensional query processor to retrieve the transactional data from the transactional data storage area and metadata from the transactional data storage area and metadata from the multidimensional data storage area, wherein the second set of queries do not conform to any of the one or more multidimensional query languages; and

a network device comprising;

a streaming database having a local multidimensional data storage area,

a metadata driver to receive metadata from the dynamic query engine of the data warehouse, and

a data driver to create a storage schema in the local multidimensional data storage area according to the metadata received from the dynamic query engine, to generate the second set of queries for the dynamic query engine, to receive transactional data from the dynamic query engine, and to store the received transactional data in the local multidimensional storage area according to the storage schema.

23. The system of claim 22, wherein the storage schema of the local multidimensional data storage area of the network device comprises a snowflake schema.

24. The system of claim 22,

wherein the network device comprises a dashboard device,

wherein the data warehouse comprises a data warehouse for an enterprise software system,

wherein the transactional data comprises enterprise data representing enterprise activities, and

wherein the dynamic query engine transmits, to the dashboard device, results of the second set of queries associated with the dashboard device as a real-time stream of events that indicate incremental, real-time changes to the enterprise data in response to the enterprise activities.

25. The system of claim 24, wherein the dashboard device includes a graphical user interface (“

GUI”

) module to provide a dashboard to one or more users and to receive requests for particular views of the transactional data of the data warehouse from the one or more users.

26. The system of claim 25, wherein the data driver generates the second set of queries in accordance with the requests from the one or more users.

27. The system of claim 22, wherein the data warehouse comprises an SAP®

Business Information Warehouse (“

SAP BW”

).

28. The system of claim 27, wherein the multidimensional query processor comprises a Multidimensional Expressions (“

MDX”

) processor.

29. The system of claim 22, wherein the additional interface provided by the dynamic query engine is a Structured Query Language (“

SQL”

) interface.

30. A computer-readable medium comprising instructions for causing a programmable processor to:

receive, from a dashboard device, a unique identifier and a set of queries, wherein the queries do not conform to a multidimensional data query language;

store the unique identifier and the set of queries in a data table;

retrieve metadata from a transactional data storage area of a data warehouse;

retrieve metadata from a multidimensional data storage area of a data warehouse;

transmit the metadata from the transactional data storage area and the metadata from the multidimensional data storage area to the dashboard device using a chunking protocol operating at an application layer (layer seven) of the Open Systems Interconnection (“

OSI”

) networking model;

retrieve transactional data from the transactional data storage area of the data warehouse; and

transmit the retrieved transactional data to the dashboard device using the chunking protocol.