Package com.sap.ip.bi.sdk.dac.result

Provides applications created with the SDK with a complete set of interfaces to access the results of a query, delivering a relational result set from a relational data source, and an OLAP result set from an OLAP data source.

See:
Description

Interface Summary

IBIAxisCursor	A cursor to allow navigation of a multidimensional result set (IBIDataSet) as well as access to metadata describing the current cell of the multidimensional result set.
IBICellCursor	Enumerations showing the optional and mandatory columns of the CellCursor.
IBICellStatus	Specifies the state of a cell.
IBICursorColumn	Predefined mandatory columns for the different types of cursors.
IBICursorColumnType	An enumeration for the data types of a cell column.
IBIDataSet	Provides access to and navigation of the results of a multidimensional query.
IBIDimensionAttributeCursor	A cursor to allow navigation of the set of attributes of a dimension (IBIDimensionCursor) as well as access to metadata describing the cursor.
IBIDimensionCursor	A cursor to allow navigation of a dimension of a multidimensional result set (IBIDataSet) as well as access to metadata describing the cursor.
IBIResultSet	Provides access to and navigation of the results of a relational query.

Package com.sap.ip.bi.sdk.dac.result Description

Provides applications created with the SDK with a complete set of interfaces to access the results of a query, delivering a relational result set from a relational data source, and an OLAP result set from an OLAP data source. This package documentation contains the following sections:

• Overview
• Key Features
• OLAP Result Sets
• Relational Result Sets
• OLAP Table Model
• Additional Information

Overview

The SDK needs to be able to represent result sets for the diverse queries that can be defined using the SDK's Query APIs. These result sets can have any geometry (for example, crosstabs with nested dimensions) and can contain any data type (for example, Time, Date, Timestamp, Double, String, and Integer), and can be relational or OLAP result sets.

It's the job of the SDK's Resultset API to provide applications with a complete set of interfaces to access these result sets, delivering a relational result set from a relational data source, and an OLAP result set from an OLAP data source.

The ResultSet API is based on Sun's established java.sql.ResultSet interface, which is part of the JDBC API. Only a few lightweight interfaces have been added to facilitate a multidimensional representation.

Key Features

Key features of the ResultSet API include:

• Relational support
  The ResultSet API's basis in JDBC is grounded in supporting the representation of relational query results and is by nature tabular, supporting access to columns and navigation on the rows.
  
  
• Multidimensional support
  The ResultSet API has additional elements that facilitate a multidimensional presentation. Although any result set can be represented as a flat table, it's too great a burden on OLAP applications to decompose such a representation to create a multidimensional rendering. To support multidimensional results, we have therefore added elements such as axes that correspond to the elements of a multidimensional query.
  
  
• Performance
  The result space represented by a query can be very large. It can be impossible for an application to deliver so much data to a UI all at once. To avoid this, the ResultSet API allows an application to fetch only a part of the data that is represented by a query.
  
  
• Hierarchies
  The API facilitates the rendition of hierarchies by providing information about hierarchy levels such as parent/child relations and number of children.
  
  
• Cells
  The API supports provider-specific cell properties, such as currency/unit and numeric formatting information. The API supports empty cells and cells in which errors occurred, such as overflows.
  
  
• Compatibility
  The API has been engineered to be compatible with a variety of data sources, supported by the SDK's ODBO, XMLA, JDBC, and SAP Query connectors. Since java.sql.ResultSet is not the native format for retrieving results from data sources that are not JDBC-compliant, support in the non-JDBC connectors for JDBC's features depends on the data source. For example, JDBC-specific data types such as "Blob" are not supported.

OLAP Result Sets

A data set is a multidimensional result set returned by an OLAP server. It is a complex data object that can be conceptually represented by two components: cell data and axis data. The IBIDataset interface provides the methods to access the information contained in a data set, supporting the concept of cursors (instances of java.sql.ResultSet) for each axis and dimension.

The data set representation conforms closely to conventions in Microsoft's OLE DB for OLAP (ODBO) Programmer's Reference. We've made adjustments in structures and naming to comply with Java naming conventions as well as for simplification.

IBIDataset extends java.sql.ResultSet to provide direct access to the cell data (cell cursor) as well as to provide methods to retrieve the list of axes (axis cursors). IBIAxisCursor extends IBIResultSet, hence providing access to and navigation on the contents of each axis. The AxisCursors in turn contain DimensionCursors (one for each dimension) which in turn can contain DimensionAttributeCursors (for attributes of a dimension). For example, the dimension Product might have attributes Color and Size.

This relationship between axis, dimension, and cell cursors is schematically depicted below:

Relational Result Sets

The relational result set (IBIResultSet) is based on java.sql.ResultSet, from Sun's established standard. It supports all common data types and blockwise fetching of tabular data within a Java API.

Part of the set JDBC APIs, java.sql.ResultSet's implementation is the responsibility of the JDBC driver implementers. We provide our own implementation for such cases where no JDBC driver is available, for example in the case of the BI OLAP and SAP Query connectors.

The ResultSet API's IBIResultSet extends java.sql.ResultSet, adding the capability to synchronize the navigation of multiple result sets for use in OLAP result sets. We also support the need to provide additional features, such as conditional zero suppression or summation and calculated keyfigures (additional columns based on data contained in the result set itself). To achieve this, IBIResultSet supports pluggable filters which follow the "decorator" design pattern, forwarding IBIResultSet calls to another IBIResultSet and adding the required functionality.

By reusing the ResultSet interface and all data types of the java.sql package, our design required adding only a few lightweight interfaces. In this way, we gain interoperability with the existing ecosystem for java.sql.ResultSet.

OLAP Table Model

The OLAP Table Model is a sub-package of the ResultSet API, and provides classes that facilitate the rendering of a multidimensional data set into a two-dimensional matrix.

For Additional Information

• More information about the SDK's ResultSet API is located in the Retrieving Result Sets chapter of the Developer's Guide
• See also JDBC technology at Sun: http://java.sun.com/products/jdbc

Since:

3.50