# Using aggregations for OLAP **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [January 20, 2014, 3:17pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-aggregations-for-olap/15324 "2014-01-20T15:17:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Roy\_Jacobs](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/roy_jacobs/32/1855_2.png) [@Roy\_Jacobs](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Roy_Jacobs)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 3:17pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-aggregations-for-olap/15324/1 "2014-01-20T15:17:49Z")
I am interested in using the new aggregations support to implement something similar to an OLAP cube. Let's say I have a big bunch of documents that represent orders. On those documents I want to calculate a bunch of metrics (using the "metric" aggregation) based on various fields. Stuff like "# of items". Then, I want to group this (using the "bucket" aggregation) based on brand, for instance. All of this is multi-tenant as well, so I need to filter out a whole lot of irrelevant data for every query. The amount of documents is quite high (hundreds of millions) so I was wondering if aggregations have any form of caching or precalculation, or if they have to traverse the entire index every time I do a query. This could also be quite prohibitive memory-wise. Has anyone been using aggregations in this manner? Roy -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "elasticsearch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com). To view this discussion on the web visit [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/08487eb4-5a1e-4e30-a873-8d0623d4f355%40googlegroups.com](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/08487eb4-5a1e-4e30-a873-8d0623d4f355%40googlegroups.com). For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/groups/opt\_out](https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out). ---
**Author:** ![davrob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d78d45/32.png) [@davrob](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/davrob)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2014, 5:30pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-aggregations-for-olap/15324/2 "2014-01-20T17:30:32Z")
I'm not sure what the 'official' elasticsearch view on this is but, to me, from day 1, elasticsearch has had the capability to do everything that OLAP cubes can do, in a lightweight, agile way. Creating dimensions in cubes is the same as pre-indexing calculated fields in the index e.g. week: 6, ,Month: 2, Quarter: 1, year: 2013, decade: second, century: 21st etc. are effectively dimensions calculated from a single date fact: 7th February 2013 The aggregations framework adds an immense amount of power: flexible aggregations on top of fast search and powerful sorting capabilities, is a pretty amazing package for business analytics, without any of the hype and expense typically associated with OLAP and Business Intelligence. I guess time will tell on the performance front, but I'm quite optimistic, in the end aggregations and facets are just big in-memory map-reduce jobs - if you pre-calculate a lot of the dimensions you are interested in, rather than relying on scripts, you should get pretty decent performance. -David. On Monday, 20 January 2014 15:17:49 UTC, Roy Jacobs wrote: > I am interested in using the new aggregations support to implement > something similar to an OLAP cube. > > Let's say I have a big bunch of documents that represent orders. On those > documents I want to calculate a bunch of metrics (using the "metric" > aggregation) based on various fields. Stuff like "# of items". Then, I want > to group this (using the "bucket" aggregation) based on brand, for > instance. All of this is multi-tenant as well, so I need to filter out a > whole lot of irrelevant data for every query. > > The amount of documents is quite high (hundreds of millions) so I was > wondering if aggregations have any form of caching or precalculation, or if > they have to traverse the entire index every time I do a query. This could > also be quite prohibitive memory-wise. > > Has anyone been using aggregations in this manner? > > Roy -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "elasticsearch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com). To view this discussion on the web visit [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/c1893874-02bb-4a02-b019-5c7f31189b0d%40googlegroups.com](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/c1893874-02bb-4a02-b019-5c7f31189b0d%40googlegroups.com). For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/groups/opt\_out](https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out). ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 1:55am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-aggregations-for-olap/15324/3 "2017-07-06T01:55:50Z")