The GATE Grind

GATE 2026 DA – Question 43

Database Management and Warehousing · Data warehouse modelling and OLAP · 2 marks · Multiple choice

Consider the concept hierarchies as shown in the figure.

Which of the following options denotes the total number of possible data cuboids from these concept hierarchies?

Three concept hierarchies, each with three levels: Year, Month, Day; Country, State, City; and Item Category, Item Type, Item.
  1. $4^3$
  2. $2^3$
  3. $2!$
  4. $4!$

Practise this question in The GATE Grind →

Show answer and explanation

Correct answer: (A) $4^3$

Explanation

For each dimension a cuboid can use any one of its levels or leave the dimension out altogether (the 'all' level), so a hierarchy with $L$ levels gives $L + 1$ choices. Each hierarchy here has 3 levels, so there are 4 choices for each of the 3 dimensions, which gives $4^3 = 64$ cuboids.