Patent ID: 6167405
Filing Date: 2000-12-26
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
A method for facilitating the creation of data warehouse requests for populating data warehouse tables defining a particular warehouse design in a data warehouse system comprised of a number of data source systems and a target system, a repository component for storing information representative of the warehouse design and a warehouse management interface component operatively coupled to the repository for enabling development of warehouse requests required to populate the warehouse tables, each warehouse request having a plurality of subcomponents specifying a process of extracting data from source tables of a source database located in one of the data source systems, moving the data to the target system, transforming the data to match target system requirements and then storing the data into a target database of the target system, the method comprising the steps of:(a) during the design phase, generating and storing in the repository, information defining reference links between each target data warehouse table and the source tables from which instances must be extracted, identification of the source databases and target database, reference links between corresponding portions of the source and target tables, and identification of those warehouse request entities related to a number of target tables to be populated by a particular warehouse request;(b) upon completion of the design phase, invoking a data replication management (DRM) component included within the warehouse management interface component in response to a selection of a warehouse request to be implemented;(c) in response to the selection, automatically creating the different subcomponents of a data warehouse request by the DRM component accessing the previously created reference links from the repository and displaying a visual representation of the subcomponents of the request; and,(d) providing access to menus of a menu facility for enabling visualization of the automatically created data warehouse request and for making any required modifications to information related to the each of the subcomponents selected for display prior to scheduling the request for execution.