Streaming SQL and OLAP are two of the most interesting and powerful paradigms in data processing. OLAP is a well-established technique for analyzing large databases of historic data. Streaming SQL is a more recent innovation, that applies the declarative power of the SQL language to the problem of managing data in motion.

So, what happens when you combine OLAP with Streaming SQL? The combination is capable of solving some business problems that can't be solved any other way. OLAP is usually hampered by conventional ETL techniques: it is difficult to keep the data warehouse up to date, because batch-based ETL processes are only efficient when dealing with a few hours or days of data. OLAP engines excel at comparisons between time periods (say, this quarter compared to the same quarter last year) or comparable …