CAL: A Generic Query and Analysis Language for Data Warehouses

Data Warehouses (DWs) and OLAP systems are essential tools in organizational decision making. However, users of these systems are often provided with complex data models and system-specific GUIs and dashboards to analyze the data and generate reports. Available DW query languages like MDX and Oracle OLAP support only numeric data and moreover require skilled DW developers to design queries. This can strain the analyst and restrict effective data analysis. In this paper, the authors provide a solution to this problem by introducing a powerful textual query language based entirely on the abstract datacube metaphor for multidimensional analysis.