Multi Dimensional Database ???

The concept of multidimensional databases has been around since the end of the second world war and surfaced late in the 60's. These database structures are now being embraced by even the largest of technology groups such as IBM, Oracle, Sun, and Microsoft.

The ability to concieve a multidimensional data architecture is not easy to acquire. It is probably the best architecture to describe business processes, however, we are traditionally trained to think in tuple - domain structure. The architecture that looks like a chess board.

Multidimensional data architectures bring to play the idea expressed as a 'hypercube', therefore, n'th additional dimensions are added to the data orthography, both during the writing of the data to the warehouse, and the retrieval and display of the data to the chosen device in the chosen department to the chosen person at the chosen time.

There are several database schema's that currently provide this kind of multidimensional architecture, however, they require a considerable amount of re-thinking by the data architect in order to build and maintain an enterprise robust environment.

Can anyone name just a few of these multidimensional architectures ??? Have you ever heard of anything outside the tuple - domain architecture when it comes to database ?

Just musing again.