Patent ID: 6996554

Claim:
A database processor and system architecture capable of operating as an On-line Analytical Processing (OLAP) system for the implementation of multidimensional aggregates of an input relation, and which is arranged to obtain such multidimensional aggregates after a preprocessing stage which identifies aggregates which can be obtained without computation, said pro-processing stage being arranged to: i) prior to obtaining multidimensional aggregates, in the preprocessing stage, identify and store the primary keys derived from the schema of the input relation; ii) establish a Group-by schema generator to generate schemas from minimum arity to maximum arity of aggregate for the possible aggregates of the input relation; iii) sequentially in an arity order beginning with single columns and proceeding in an order in which each lower level of every sub-tree is visited before any root comparing the generated schemas with the primary keys stored in step (i) augmented by any previous schema identified as being a key and in the event of a generated schema containing a stored key treating the input relation as the virtual representation of the corresponding Group-by aggregate, such that the Group-by aggregate is identified as capable of being obtained without computation.