Title: Exact and inexact methods for solving the problem of view selection for aggregate queries

Authors: Zohreh Asgharzadeh Talebi, Rada Chirkova, Yahya Fathi

Addresses: Operations Research Program, NC State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA. ' Computer Science Department, NC State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA. ' Operations Research Program, NC State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA

Abstract: We study the following warehouse view-selection problem: Given a data-warehouse schema, a set of parameterised aggregate queries and their frequency distribution, and a storage-limit constraint, find a set of aggregate views that, when materialised in the warehouse, would minimise the evaluation costs of the frequent queries, subject to a storage-limit constraint. Optimising the layout of stored data using view selection has a direct impact on the performance of data warehouses. We introduce an integer-programming model to obtain optimal solutions for the warehouse view-selection problem, and propose a heuristic to obtain competitive inexact solutions where our exact method is not applicable.

Keywords: data reporting; OLAP; business intelligence cycle; schema specification selection; view selection; data warehouse design; data analysis tools; online analytical processing; aggregate queries.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIDM.2009.029086

International Journal of Business Intelligence and Data Mining, 2009 Vol.4 No.3/4, pp.391 - 415

Accepted: 07 Oct 2008
Published online: 03 Nov 2009 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article