Towards better fitting data warehouse systems

Abstract

In order to produce data warehouse systems that reflect organizational decisional needs, development should be rooted in the goals and decisions of organizations. The goal-decision-information model and associated information elicitation techniques for decision making are presented. There are four main techniques, Ends analysis, Means analysis, Critical Success Factor analysis, and Outcome Feedback analysis. Using these, the requirements engineer is able to elicit the required information as well as the sub decisions of a given decision. The elicitation techniques are then applied to these sub decisions. The elicitation process ends when all decisions/sub decisions have been thus processed. A comparison of this approach is made with data base driven and ER driven development approaches to data warehouse development to show that it produces systems that fit well with decisional requirements. © 2009 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.