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Cube

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

  • 36 Accesses

Synonyms

Hypercube

Definition

A cube is a data structure for storing and and analyzing large amounts of multidimensional data, often referred to as On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP). Data in a cube lives in a space spanned by a number of hierarchical dimensions. A single point in this space is called a cell. A (non-empty) cell contains the values of one or more measures.

Key Points

As an example, a three-dimensional cube for capturing sales may have a Product dimension P, a Time dimension T, and a Store dimension S, capturing the product sold, the time of sale, and the store it was sold in, for each sale, respectively. The cube has two measures: Dollar Sales and ItemSales, capturing the sales price and the number of items sold, respectively. In a cube, the combinations of a dimension value from each dimension define a cellof the cube. The measure value(s), e.g., DollarSales and ItemSales, corresponding to the particular combination of dimension values are then stored stored in the...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Gray J, Chaudhuri S, Bosworth A, Layman A, Venkatrao M, Reichart D, Pellow F, Pirahesh H. Data cube: a relational aggregation operator generalizing group-by, cross-tab and sub-totals. Data Mining Knowl Discov. 1997;1(1):29–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Jensen CS, Pedersen TB, Thomsen C. Multidimensional databases and data warehousing. Synthesis lectures on data management. San Rafael: Morgan Claypool; 2010.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  3. Pedersen TB. Managing complex multidimensional data. In: Aufaure M-A, Zimányi E, editors. Business intelligence – second European summer school, eBISS 2012. Brussels: Springer LNBIB; 2013, 15–21 July 2012, Tutorial Lectures.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Vaisman A, Zimányi E. Data warehouse systems – design and smplementation. Springer; 2014.

    Google Scholar 

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Torben Bach Pedersen

Authors
  1. Torben Bach Pedersen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Torben Bach Pedersen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Torben Bach Pedersen

  2. DISI, Univ. of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Stefano Rizzi

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Cite this entry

Pedersen, T.B. (2018). Cube. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_884

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