Evaluation of approaches for modeling of security in data warehouses

Abstract

A Data Warehouse (DW) is a complex system that facilitates decision makers for the fulfillment of strategic, informational and decisional needs by extracting and integrating data from heterogeneous sources. They are complex due to the kind of problems they are built to solve. Due to the sensitive data contained in the DW it is important to assure the security of the DWs from the early stages of the life cycle of its development starting from requirements analysis to implementation and maintenance so that unauthorized attempts cannot access the DW. Traditionally, security was not considered as an important element in modeling of DWs. This survey paper gives a review of the DW security attempts at various abstraction levels like requirements, conceptual, logical, and physical modeling. Further, evaluation of various approaches for modeling security in DWs has been presented. This may help the designer, while selecting the good approach for DW design considering the security aspect as well. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.