Why does web analytics like Google Analytics use dimensions and metrics instead of SQL statements?

It's just that when I am again familiar with SQL operations, when you retrieve data from Google Analytics, I found that they do not use SQL, but use Dimensions and Metrics and their combinations.

Why is the reason for this? I think it does not have a SQL interface (or upload a file in a regular web server)? If so, how are SQL statements converted to Dimension, Metrics (and segment and filters)?

Metrics seem to be typically “aggregates” like count () or average (), and Dimension tends to be the registered values ​​themselves (like Browser == IE or Country == Australia), which is the same. as the meanings group by. Filters are like conditional expressions, but what about a segment?

It seems that if we specify Dimensions, it will automatically make group byand display this field. This is usually count () or sum (). What if we want instead average(*)? And what if we want to show it, but don’t want him to do it group by?

An example website for the experiment is at http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gdata/gdataExplorer.html

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the use of the terms "Dimensions" and "Metrics" suggests that Google uses an OLAP database, not a relational database ... SQL is used for relational databases: OLAP uses MDX or its own query languages ​​(if Oracle).

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLAP

The core of any OLAP system is an OLAP cube (also called a "multidimensional cube" or hypercube).

It consists of numerical facts called measures , which are disaggregated by size .

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