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Message Posted: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 @ 23:05:20 GMT

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Bob,

I think you're combining two different issues. The problem is not how we express SQL when trying to get an analytical answer, the issue is how we express this request to the tool that we interact with. In the case of ROLAP's like Business Objects or Microstrategy, all of this SQL complexity is masked from the requestor. I don't care if it uses 20 temp files and does an outer join, I only care that the visual object model I use to develop the request is powerful enough to let me ask any question I want, and then let the SQL generator do its job.

So in the case of Microstrategy, which has by the far the most sophisticated SQL engine, why should I care if takes 10 pages of SQL to satisfy a query, so long as it only takes a tenth of a second to generate it. Now, the time it takes to satisfy the query is another issue, but that goes to the heart of the problem of why RDBMS's are so poor at analytical processing. MOLAPs are one answer, but we all know now that they can't scale. Some of the databases, especially Microsoft, and now finally Oracle, have embedded MOLAP capabilites, but it still feels like two databases in one. If you want good performance from SQL2000 AS, you better learn to write your queries in MDX, not SQL. Maybe that's the long term answer, I'm not sure.

But in the meantime, I'd take issue with your comment that we don't need more OLAP operators in SQL, I think we do. And we do especially because that forces the database vendors to build optimizer technology to deal with them.

-NR

Neil Raden
Hired Brains, Inc.
www.hiredbrains.com

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