OLAP III

Business Intelligence is now becoming more and more pervasive, which entails an increasing participation in the decision-making process of users with competence in the business domain but low ICT skills. This requires further investigation to provide users with even more effective and user-centered paradigms for analytical querying. In OLAP III we envision OLAP to come with 3 properties: Intentional querying, Intelligent results, Interesting highlights. In a nutshell, OLAP III revolutionizes both what a query and what a query answer is.

• Query Formulation becomes intentional. The focus of querying should be on the actual goal of the analyst and NOT on the data she wants to get. This entails an algebra of intentional operators and a mechanism to allow the system decide which data to fetch.
• Query Answers are no more sets of tuples. Instead of simply listing sets of tuples for an SQL query, the results of an intentional query can be:
  • … a dashboard that apart from data, also comes with (i) the automatic mining of models and patterns, providing intelligent results, and (ii) the extraction of interesting highlights, i.e., “jewels” hidden in the result, plus, the appropriate (iii) visuals and generated text (see the Intentional Model section for the overall modeling issues and the Interestingness section for the definition and handling of interesting highlights)
  • … a data movie that includes a set of complementary queries supporting a data story, whose results are properly visualized, enriched with textual comments, and vocally enriched (see the Cinecubes section for automated reporting)