Cubes 0.9 Released

The new version of Cubes – light-weight Python OLAP framework – brings new StarBrowser, which we discussed in previous blog posts:

• mappings, see also documentation
• joins and denormalization
• aggregations and new features, see also documentation

The new SQL backend is written from scratch, it is much cleaner, transparent, configurable and open for future extensions. Also allows direct browsing of star/snowflake schema without denormalization, therefore you can use Cubes on top of a read-only database. See DenormalizedMapper and SnowflakeMapper for more information.

Just to name a few new features: multiple aggregated computations (min, max,...), cell details, optional/configurable denormalization.

Important Changes

Summary of most important changes that might affect your code:

Slicer: Change all your slicer.ini configuration files to have [workspace] section instead of old [db] or [backend]. Depreciation warning is issued, will work if not changed.

Model: Change dimensions in model to be an array instead of a dictionary. Same with cubes. Old style: "dimensions" = { "date" = ... } new style: "dimensions" = [ { "name": "date", ... } ]. Will work if not changed, just be prepared.

Python: Use Dimension.hierarchy() instead of Dimension.default_hierarchy.

New Features

• slicer_context() - new method that holds all relevant information from configuration. can be reused when creating tools that work in connected database environment
• added Hierarchy.all_attributes() and .key_attributes()
• Cell.rollup_dim() - rolls up single dimension to a specified level. this might later replace the Cell.rollup() method
• Cell.drilldown() - drills down the cell
• create_workspace(backend,model, **options) - new top-level method for creating a workspace by specifying backend name. Easier to create browsers (from possible browser pool) programmatically. The backend name might be full module name path or relative to the cubes.backends, for example sql.star for new or sql.browser for old SQL browser.

• get_backend() - get backend by name

• AggregationBrowser.cell_details(): New method returning values of attributes representing the cell. Preliminary implementation, return value might change.

• AggregationBrowser.cut_details(): New method returning values of attributes representing a single cut. Preliminary implementation, return value might change.

• Dimension.validate() now checks whether there are duplicate attributes

• Cube.validate() now checks whether there are duplicate measures or details

SQL backend:

• new StarBrowser implemented:
  • StarBrowser supports snowflakes or denormalization (optional)
  • for snowflake browsing no write permission is required (does not have to be denormalized)
• new DenormalizedMapper for mapping logical model to denormalized view
• new SnowflakeMapper for mapping logical model to a snowflake schema
• ddl_for_model() - get schema DDL as string for model
• join finder and attribute mapper are now just Mapper - class responsible for finding appropriate joins and doing logical-to-physical mappings
• coalesce_attribute() - new method for coalescing multiple ways of describing a physical attribute (just attribute or table+schema+attribute)
• dimension argument was removed from all methods working with attributes (the dimension is now required attribute property)
• added create_denormalized_view() with options: materialize, create_index, keys_only

Slicer tool/server:

• slicer ddl - generate schema DDL from model
• slicer test - test configuration and model against database and report list of issues, if any
• Backend options are now in [workspace], removed configurability of custom backend section. Warning are issued when old section names [db] and [backend] are used
• server responds to /details which is a result of AggregationBrowser.cell_details()

Examples:

• added simple Flask based web example - dimension aggregation browser

Changes

• in Model: dimension and cube dictionary specification during model initialization is depreciated, list should be used (with explicitly mentioned attribute "name") -- important
• important: Now all attribute references in the model (dimension attributes, measures, ...) are required to be instances of Attribute() and the attribute knows it's dimension
• removed hierarchy argument from Dimension.all_attributes() and .key_attributes()
• renamed builder to denormalizer
• Dimension.default_hierarchy is now depreciated in favor of Dimension.hierarchy() which now accepts no arguments or argument None - returning default hierarchy in those two cases
• metadata are now reused for each browser within one workspace - speed improvement.

Fixes

• Slicer version should be same version as Cubes: Original intention was to have separate server, therefore it had its own versioning. Now there is no reason for separate version, moreover it can introduce confusion.
• Proper use of database schema in the Mapper

Links

Sources can be found on github. Read the documentation.

Join the Google Group for discussion, problem solving and announcements.

Submit issues and suggestions on github

IRC channel #databrewery on irc.freenode.net

If you have any questions, comments, requests, do not hesitate to ask.