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> If you’ve got your OLAP schemas as objects in your application code I guess I have a wildly different interpretation of typical OLAP scenarios. To me this ac

> If you’ve got your OLAP schemas as objects in your application code I guess I have a wildly different interpretation of typical OLAP scenarios. To me this acronym mostly means "reporting". And in 99% of cases where the business desires a new report, the ideal views or type systems have not been anticipated. In these cases (most of them), I can't imagine a faster way to give the business an answer than just writing some sql.

timgdelisle 1y ago
I'm one of the Moose maintainers, and yes, most OLAP use cases fall into data warehousing categories where exposing the database to analysts and letting them run loose with SQL is viable. We're seeing more and more that OLAP is becoming a core part of the application stack, for user and agent-facing analytics. There, we see a lot more appetite for building on the analytical stack the way we build on the transactional one.
ElatedOwl 1y ago
I agree with that being fastest, but not cheapest. In my experience these one off reports are very brittle. The app ends up making schema changes that are breaking to these one off reports, and you usually don’t find out until it goes to production. I’ve dealt with the maintenance nightmare before. At current gig we’re exploring solutions, curious what a robust pipeline looks like in 2025. The ORM piece is interesting — we use ActiveRecord and Ruby, and accidentally breaking schema changes within app will get caught by the unit test suite. I would love for a way to bring OLAP reports in similarly to test at CI time.
- wredcoll 1y ago
  I mean, if you're relying on tests to catch schema changes... then test your sql reports? This doesn't seem like an amzingly cool solution but if that's the one you're already using...
- lpapez 1y ago
  Why not test the OLAP reports? Surely there is a way to run a raw query in Rails/ActiveRecord and use it in a smoke test?
  - datadrivenangel 1y ago
    They call this Data Contracts.
sdairs 1y ago
Without doubt, the majority of the market for OLAP today is still internal warehousing & BI. But the market for using OLAP behind features inside user-facing B2C/B2B apps has been kicking off for quite a few years now. Big consumer apps like Stripe, Uber, Shopify...pretty much every B2B SaaS with a usage/metrics dashboard...they're usually punting queries off to an OLAP to populate those stats/charts. That's where something like this might come in handy, I can't imagine it being using for general internal reporting (in the current form, anyway.)

timgdelisle 1y ago

I'm one of the Moose maintainers, and yes, most OLAP use cases fall into data warehousing categories where exposing the database to analysts and letting them run loose with SQL is viable. We're seeing more and more that OLAP is becoming a core part of the application stack, for user and agent-facing analytics. There, we see a lot more appetite for building on the analytical stack the way we build on the transactional one.

ElatedOwl 1y ago

I agree with that being fastest, but not cheapest. In my experience these one off reports are very brittle. The app ends up making schema changes that are breaking to these one off reports, and you usually don’t find out until it goes to production. I’ve dealt with the maintenance nightmare before. At current gig we’re exploring solutions, curious what a robust pipeline looks like in 2025. The ORM piece is interesting — we use ActiveRecord and Ruby, and accidentally breaking schema changes within app will get caught by the unit test suite. I would love for a way to bring OLAP reports in similarly to test at CI time.

wredcoll 1y ago
I mean, if you're relying on tests to catch schema changes... then test your sql reports? This doesn't seem like an amzingly cool solution but if that's the one you're already using...
lpapez 1y ago
Why not test the OLAP reports? Surely there is a way to run a raw query in Rails/ActiveRecord and use it in a smoke test?
- datadrivenangel 1y ago
  They call this Data Contracts.

sdairs 1y ago

Without doubt, the majority of the market for OLAP today is still internal warehousing & BI. But the market for using OLAP behind features inside user-facing B2C/B2B apps has been kicking off for quite a few years now. Big consumer apps like Stripe, Uber, Shopify...pretty much every B2B SaaS with a usage/metrics dashboard...they're usually punting queries off to an OLAP to populate those stats/charts. That's where something like this might come in handy, I can't imagine it being using for general internal reporting (in the current form, anyway.)