Transforming an operational system model to a data warehouse model: a survey of techniques

Abstract

Data warehouse modeling is a complicated task, which involves both knowledge of business processes, as well as familiarity with operational information systems structure and behavior. Several modeling techniques were suggested to utilize the operational system structural or behavioral model in order to construct a data warehouse conceptual model. In this paper, we survey these techniques and analyze their capabilities using a feature-based comparison method. Our analysis clearly indicates that the various techniques are limited in their applicability to model large-scale systems, as they require acquaintance with the business processes and ability to select relevant transactional entities. These techniques also require multiple manual actions, since discovering measures and relevant dimensional entities are unassisted, and usually disregard the process perspective. Our analysis points out the need for improving the surveyed techniques.