Oracle has added a new MODEL clause to SQL, which allows
the return of an OLAP cube, including
partitions, dimensions, measures, and derived values.
See
e.g. The SQL Model Clause of Oracle Database 10g (PDF), Aug 2003
in http://technet.oracle.com/products/b...w_sqlmodel.pdf
at http://technet.oracle.com/products/b...g/content.html

I would like to get people's impressions of this.

I doubt this is part of standard SQL.

Will front ends (besides Oracle Discoverer) support it?

How does this compare in functionality to MDX?
Is this likely to have very good performance?
Will it be added by other rdbms vendors?

etc.


--
Hopefully helpfully yours,
Steve
--
Steven Tolkin steve . tolkin at fmr dot com 617-563-0516
Fidelity Investments 82 Devonshire St. V4D Boston MA 02109
There is nothing so practical as a good theory. Comments are by me,
not Fidelity Investments, its subsidiaries or affiliates.

Hi Steve,

I wrote up a shortish summary of the MODEL clause which you can view
at http://www.rittman.net/stories/2003/...delClause.html

I can't comment on how it compares to MDX, but it struck me as quite a
useful addition to Oracle SQL, giving it some of the modelling
capabilities previously found in Express and 9i OLAP. This sort of
functionality was mostly used by products such as Oracle Financial
Analyzer, and it's probably been introduced to allow the upcoming
Enterprise Planning & Budgeting (the replacement for OFA) to run in
both ROLAP and MOLAP modes.

One interesting touch with the MODEL clause is how the relational
engine within Oracle will handle part of the query being dealt with by
database tables, and part of it with a multidimensional analytic
workspace. From reading some of the papers released at Oracleworld,
Oracle will deal with relational-multidimensional MODEL clause queries
in a special way, bypassing the usual OLAP_TABLE function and
interacting with the analytic workspace directly.

To be honest though it's early days yet and we probably won't get to
use the feature until 10g becomes available later this year/early this
year (unless you're lucky enough to be a 10g beta tester).

hope this helps

Mark


steve.tolkin (AT) fmr (DOT) com wrote in message news:<u65jqt1wh.fsf (AT) fmr (DOT) com>...