EDBT 2023
Describing and Assessing Cubes
Through Intentional Analytics
Matteo Francia, Matteo Golfarelli, Stefano Rizzi
University of Bologna, Italy
26th International Conference on Extending Database Technology (EDBT 2023)

EDBT 2023
Intentional Analytics Model (IAM)
In classical OLAP…
- Query multidimensional cubes through low-level operators
- Query results are simple plain tables
Intentional Analytics Model
- Data scientists express intentions
- … through high-level user-friendly syntax
- … coupled with analytics to automatically enrich results with insights
Two IAM operators: describe and assess
Matteo Francia – University of Bologna

EDBT 2023
Describe
- Automatically apply (ML) models to data
- Rank insights by interest
- Highlight interesting insights
with sales by product, country
describe revenues
Research papers:
- Francia, Matteo, et al. "Enhancing cubes with
models to describe multidimensional data."
Information Systems Frontiers 2022
Matteo Francia – University of Bologna 3
data model
highlight components
product
type
category
customer
gender
store
city
country
date month year
quantity
revenue
cost
SALES

EDBT 2023
Assess
- Compare the actual to the expected behavior (i.e., two cubes)
- Judge the outcome of the comparison
with sales by country for country = ‘Italy’
assess revenues against country = ‘France’
Research papers:
- Francia M, et al. "Suggesting assess queries for interactive analysis of multidimensional data."
IEEE TKDE 2022.
- Francia, Matteo, et al. "Assess queries for interactive analysis of data cubes."
EDBT 2021.
Matteo Francia – University of Bologna 4