I have been looking for ways to provide analytics for an app which is powered by REST server written in NodeJs and MySQL. Discovered OLAP which can actually make this much easier.
And found a python library that provides an OLAP HTTP server called 'Slicer'
Can someone explain how this works? Does this mean I have to update my schema. And create what is called fact tables?
Can this be used in conjunction with my NodeJS App? Any examples? Since I have only created single server apps. Would python reside on the same nodejs server. How will it start? ('forever app.js' is my default script)
If I cant use python since I have no exp, what are basics to do it in Nodejs?
My model is basically list of words, so the olap queries I have are words made in days,weeks,months of length 2,5,10 letters in languages eng,french,german etc
Ideas, hints and guidance much appreciated!
As you found out, CUbes provides an HTTPS OLAP server (the slicer tool).
Can someone explain how this works?
As an OLAP server, you can issue OLAP queries to the server. The API is REST/JSON based, so you can easily query the server from Javascript, nodejs, Python or any other language of your choice via HTTP.
The server can answer OLAP queries. OLAP queries are based on a model of "facts" and "dimensions". You can for example query "the total sales amount for a given country and product, itemized by moonth".
Does this mean I have to update my schema. And create what is called fact tables?
OLAP queries are is built around the Facts and Dimension concepts.
OLAP-oriented datawarehousing strategies often involve the creation of these Fact and Dimension tables, building what is called a Star Schema or a Snowflake Schema. These schemas offer better performance for OLAP-type queries on relational databases. Data is often loaded by what is called an ETL process (it can be a simple script) that loads data in the appropriate form.
The Python Cubes framework, however, does not force you to alter your schema or create an alternate one. It has a SQL backend which allows you to define your model (in terms of Facts and Dimensions) without the need of changing the actual database model. This is the documentation for the model definition: https://pythonhosted.org/cubes/model.html .
However, in some cases you may still prefer to define a schema for Data Mining and use a transformation process to load data periodically. It depends on your needs, the amount of data you have, performance considerations, etc...
With Cubes you can also use other non RDBMS backends (ie MongoDB), some of which offer built-in aggregation capabilities that OLAP servers like Cubes can leverage.
Can this be used in conjunction with my NodeJS App?
You can issue queries to your Cubes Slicer server from NodeJS.
Any examples?
There is a Javascript client library to query Cubes. You probably want to use this one: https://github.com/Stiivi/cubes.js/
I don't know of any examples using NodeJS. You can try to get some inspiration from the included AngularJS application in Cubes (https://github.com/Stiivi/cubes/tree/master/incubator). Another client tool is CubesViewer which may be of use to you while building your model: http://jjmontesl.github.io/cubesviewer/ .
Since I have only created single server apps. Would python reside on the same nodejs server. How will it start? ('forever app.js' is my default script)
You would run Cubes Slicer server as a web application (directly from your web server, ie. Apache). For example, with Apache, you would use apache-wsgi mod which allows to serve python applications.
Slicer can also run as a small web server in a standalone process, which is very handy during development (but I wouldn't recommend for production environments). In this case, it will be listening on a different port (typically: http://localhost:5000 ).
If I cant use python since I have no exp, what are basics to do it in Nodejs?
You don't really need to use Python at all. You can configure and use Python Cubes as OLAP server, and run queries from Javascript code (ie. directly from the browser). From the client point of view, is like a database system which you can query via HTTP and get responses in JSON format.