Caching in Multidimensional Databases

One utilisation of multidimensional databases is the field of On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP). The applications in this area are designed to make the analysis of shared multidimensional information fast. On one hand, speed can be achieved by specially devised data structures and algorithms. On the other hand, the analytical process is cyclic. In other words, the user of the OLAP application runs his or her queries one after the other. The output of the last query may be there (at least partly) in one of the previous results. Therefore caching also plays an important role in the operation of these systems.