A hybrid model driven development framework for the multidimensional modeling of data warehouses!

Abstract

Developing a multidimensional (MD) model of a data warehouse (DW) is a highly complex, prone to fail, and time consuming task, due to the fact that (i) the information needs of decision makers and the available operational data sources that will populate the DW must both be considered in a conceptual MD model, and (ii) complex mappings must be performed to obtain an implementation of this conceptual MD model. However, no significant effort has been made to take these issues into account in a systematic, well structured and comprehensive development process. To overcome the lack of such a process, a framework based on the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is proposed for the development of a hybrid MD model at the conceptual level and for the automatic derivation of its logical representation. Also, a running example is shown throughout this paper.