Extending the UML for multidimensional modeling

Abstract

Multidimensional (MD) modeling is the foundation of data warehouses, MD databases, and On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) applications. In the past few years, there have been some proposals for representing the main MD properties at the conceptual level providing their own notations. In this paper, we present an extension of the Unified Modeling Language (UML), by means of stereotypes, to elegantly represent main structural and dynamic MD properties at the conceptual level. We make use of the Object Constraint Language (OCL) to specify the constraints attached to the defined stereotypes, thereby avoiding an arbitrary use of these stereotypes. The main advantage of our proposal is that it is based on a well-known standard modeling language, thereby designers can avoid learning a new specific notation or language for MD systems. Finally, we show how to use these stereotypes in Rational Rose 2000 for MD modeling. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002.