Integration of spatial networks in data warehouses: A UML profile

Abstract

Spatial Data Warehouses (SDW) and Spatial Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) systems are Business Intelligence technologies allowing efficient and interactive analysis of huge volume of geo-referenced data. Some efforts have been done to integrate complex spatial data such as field, generalized spatial data, etc., in such systems, at conceptual and physical levels. However, existing works do not support spatial networks (i.e. road networks), which define topological connections between spatial data. Thus, mandatory analysis capabilities offered by spatial networks cannot be introduced in the decision-making process powered by SOLAP systems. In this paper, motivated by relevance of using standards for the conceptual design of Data Warehouses and Geographic Information Systems, we propose a UML profile for data warehouses integrating spatial networks. We define our conceptual model in the Computer-Aided Software Engineering tool MagicDraw, and we propose a relational implementation in Oracle Spatial. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.