Abstract

ABRIL FRADE, Diego Orlando  and  PEREZ CASTILLO, José Nelson. Current data warehousing and OLAP technologies’ status applied to spatial databases. Ing. Investig. [online]. 2007, vol.27, n.1, pp.58-67. ISSN 0120-5609.

Organisations require their information on a timely, dynamic, friendly, centralised and easy-to-access basis for analysing it and taking correct decisions at the right time. Centralisation can be achieved with data warehouse technology. On-line analytical processing (OLAP) is used for analysis. Technologies using graphics and maps in data presentation can be exploited for an overall view of a company and helping to take better decisions. Geographic information systems (GIS) are useful for spatially locating information and representing it using maps. Data warehouses are generally implemented with a multidimensional data model to make OLAP analysis easier. A fundamental point in this model is the definition of measurements and dimensions; geography lies within such dimensions. Many researchers have concluded that the geographic dimension is another attribute for describing data in current analysis systems but without having an in-depth study of its spatial feature and without locating them on a map, like GIS does. Seen this way, interoperability is necessary between GIS and OLAP (called spatial OLAP or SOLAP) and several entities are currently researching this. This document summarises the current status of such research.

Keywords : OLAP; spatial OLAP; data warehouse; spatial data warehouse; GIS.

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