Towards intensional answers to OLAP queries for analytical sessions

Abstract

One of the problems in analyzing large multidimensional databases through OLAP sessions is that decision makers can be overwhelmed by the size of query answers, while they need a concise summary of data. Intensional query answering can help by providing a concise description of extensional answers (i.e., the sets of retrieved facts), generally relying on knowledge like integrity constraints, taxonomies, or patterns discovered from data. This paper proposes a framework for computing an intensional answer to an OLAP query by leveraging on the previous queries in the current session. Such intensional answer is concise and semantically rich, and allows the size of the extensional answers returned to be reduced, so as to achieve an effective trade-off between conciseness and informational content. After describing the general framework, we propose a specific instantiation that relies on previous contributions in cube modeling and intensional query answering.