Online Analytical Processing Systems

Since its origin in the 1970’s research and development into databases systems has evolved from simple file storage and processing systems to complex relational databases systems, which have provided a remarkable contribution to the current trends or environments. Databases are now such an integral part of day-to-day life that often people are unaware of their use. For example, purchasing goods from the local supermarket is likely to involve access to a database. In order to retrieve the price of the item, the application program will access the product database. A database is a collection of related data and the database management system (DBMS) is software that manages and controls access to the database (Elmasri & Navathe, 2004).