Mda Applied Research, Data Warehouse Dimensional Modeling

Several aspects should be considered in the design of data warehouse (DW) System, such as ETL process, operational data source, DW repository, etc. There are different methods for modeling in the processes of designing different aspects of DW.However they are all targeted at particular aspects of DW design, as a consequence, the artifacts of modeling are lacking in coherence and model reusability, designers find it hard to design data warehouse in an integrated and standard manner. While Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is a standard framework for the software development, it can describe the whole life cycle by means of models. The combination of MDA and data warehouse can help to solve the problem of lacking in coherence and reusibility.Dimensional modeling is the foundation for the design of DW repository. This paper proposes a method which called Model Driven Dimensional Modeling (MDDM). It applies MDA to dimensional modeling so as to solve some of the problems in the dimensional modeling. For instance, 1) some methods can not shift from multidimensional conceptual model to multidimensional logical model automatically. 2) The reusibility of models is not very promising. 3) The artifacts of the modeling can not facilitate the interchange and share of metadata.With the MDDM method, a multidimensional conceptual model is built using extended UML.Therefore it can provide the designer a standard and integrated way to design DW repository. The transformation from conceptual models to logical ones is defined clearly by the formal way Query/View/Transform (QVT). As a result the transformation is reusable. The conceptual model can be automatically transformed into a logical model which is compliant with Common Warehouse Model (CWM). Therefore the complexity of CWM modeling is decreased, and the reusibility of the modeling artifact is improved. It also helps the interchange and integration of the metadata in data warehouse.