Database & Computer Terminology

Database Concepts Terminology

In general, there are many acronyms and a lot of terminology used throughout the entire Information Technology (IT) field that is not used anywhere else. In this paper, I will briefly describe the following five terms: Online Analytical Processing (OLAP), Data warehouse, data mart, three-tier architecture, and Active Server Pages.

Online Analytical Processing - OLAP

"On-Line Analytical Processing - A category of applications and technologies for collecting, managing, processing and presenting multidimensional data for analysis and management purposes." (Pendse) OLAP is a category of software technology that enables analysts, managers and executives to combine and analyze large volumes of data through fast, consistent, interactive access to a wide variety of possible views of information. Typically, the information presented has been transformed from raw data to reflect the real dimensionality of the business as understood by the user, such as Sales and marketing analysis or Supply and Demand forecasting

Data Warehouse and Data Mart

"A data warehouse is a central aggregation of data (which can be distributed physically); a data mart is a data repository that may derive from a data warehouse or not and that emphasizes ease of access and usability for a particular designed purpose." (Searchdatabase) A data warehouse tends to start from an analysis of what data already exists and how it can be collected in such a way that the data can later be used. Data warehouses can ultimately hold large amounts of data which may become hard to sort through for specific data pieces. Data Marts help out by reducing the unnecessary data for a specific purpose, and presenting only relevant data. A Data Mart is repository of data that is designed to serve a specific group of analysts, in which the data could be from an enterprise-wide database or data warehouses.

Three-tier architecture

A three-tier architecture is any system which enforces a general separation between the following three parts:

1. Client Tier

2. Middle Tier

3. Data Storage Tier

This type of architecture offers many enhancements such as spreading the work load of the entire process among different servers and PC's, ability to implement more stringent security controls, and ability to upgrade pieces of the entire process instead of being forced to upgrade the entire process. A working example of this process is Outlook Web Access (OWA). The client (first tier) logs on to their home computer. They open up their browser and connect to the front-end Exchange server (second tier) hosting the OWA site. The OWA server, in turn, does all of the talking the backend Exchange server (third tier) where the user's mailbox resides. This architecture helps