Applying MDA to the development of data warehouses

Different modeling approaches have been proposed to overcome every design pitfall of the development of the different parts of a data warehouse (DW) system. However, they are all partial solutions which deal with isolated aspects of the DW and do not provide designers with an integrated and standard method for designing the whole DW (ETL processes, data sources, DW repository and so on). On the other hand, the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is a standard framework for software development that addresses the complete life cycle of designing, deploying, integrating, and managing applications by using models in software development. In this paper, we describe how to align the whole DW development process to MDA. Then, we define MD2A (MultiDimensional Model Driven Architecture), an approach for applying the MDA framework to one of the stages of the DW development: multidimensional (MD) modeling. First, we describe how to build the different MDA artifacts (i.e. models) by using extensions of the Unified Modeling Language (UML). Secondly, transformations between models are clearly and formally established by using the Query/View/Transformation (QVT) approach. Finally, an example is provided to better show how to apply MDA and its transformations to the MD modeling.

[1]  Matteo Golfarelli,et al.  The Dimensional Fact Model: A Conceptual Model for Data Warehouses , 1998, Int. J. Cooperative Inf. Syst..

[2]  W. H. Inmon,et al.  Building the data warehouse , 1992 .

[3]  Juan Trujillo,et al.  Physical modeling of data warehouses using UML , 2004, DOLAP '04.

[4]  M. Jarke,et al.  Fundamentals of Data Warehouses , 2003, Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

[5]  Stephen J. Mellor,et al.  MDA Distilled Principles Of Model-Driven Architecture , 2004 .

[6]  B. Barnes,et al.  Review: The Data Warehouse Toolkit (Second Edition) , 2003 .

[7]  Il-Yeol Song,et al.  Multidimensional Modeling with UML Package Diagrams , 2002, ER.

[8]  Walid G. Aref,et al.  Digital government security infrastructure design challenges , 2001 .

[9]  Panos Vassiliadis,et al.  Data Mapping Diagrams for Data Warehouse Design with UML , 2004, ER.

[10]  David Frankel,et al.  Model Driven Architecture: Applying MDA to Enterprise Computing , 2003 .

[11]  Nectaria Tryfona,et al.  starER: a conceptual model for data warehouse design , 1999, DOLAP '99.

[12]  Ivar Jacobson,et al.  The Unified Software Development Process , 1999 .

[13]  Luca Cabibbo,et al.  A Logical Approach to Multidimensional Databases , 1998, EDBT.

[14]  Juan Trujillo,et al.  A Standard for Representing Multidimensional Properties: The Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM) , 2002, ADBIS.

[15]  Juan Trujillo,et al.  A UML Based Approach for Modeling ETL Processes in Data Warehouses , 2003, ER.

[16]  Juan Trujillo,et al.  A Data Warehouse Engineering Process , 2004, ADVIS.

[17]  W. H. Inmon,et al.  Building the Data Warehouse,3rd Edition , 2002 .

[18]  Manuel Palomar,et al.  Designing Data Warehouses with OO Conceptual Models , 2001, Computer.

[19]  Eric S. K. Yu,et al.  Towards modelling and reasoning support for early-phase requirements engineering , 1997, Proceedings of ISRE '97: 3rd IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering.

[20]  Ralph Kimball,et al.  The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Complete Guide to Dimensional Modeling , 1996 .

[21]  Sergio Luján-Mora,et al.  Extending the UML for Multidimensional Modeling , 2002, UML.

[22]  Axel Uhl,et al.  Model-Driven Architecture , 2002, OOIS Workshops.

[23]  Anneke Kleppe,et al.  MDA explained - the Model Driven Architecture: practice and promise , 2003, Addison Wesley object technology series.