Dimensional templates in data warehouses: Automating the multidimensional design of data warehouse prototypes

Abstract

Prototypes are valuable tools in Data Warehouse (DW) projects. DW prototypes can help end-users to get an accurate preview of a future DW system, along with its advantages and constraints. However, DW prototypes have considerably smaller development time windows when compared to complete DW projects. This puts additional pressure on the achievement of the expected prototypes' high quality standards, especially at the highly time consuming multidimensional design: in it, a thin margin for harmful unreflected decisions exists. Some devised methods for automating DW multidimensional design can be used to accelerate this stage, yet they are more suitable to DW full projects rather than to prototypes, due to the effort, cost and expertise they require. This paper proposes the semi-automation of DW multidimensional designs using templates. We believe this approach better fits the development speed and cost constraints of DW prototyping since templates are pre-built highly adaptable and highly reusable solutions. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.