Patent ID: 7337170

Claim:
A system for planning and generating database queries using a multitude of data sources in various formats and media, which enables multi-dimensional analyses without physically building a data warehouse, the system comprising: a domain model which provides a formal description of a domain of interest, comprising classes which are concepts in a domain of discourse, properties of each class describing its attributes including its relations with other classes and constraints on properties in the classes; a mapping server which generates a domain model specific to a set of data sources by specifying mapping between entities in said domain model and entities in the data sources; an ontology query generator which translates one or more queries in a natural language format to generate one or more ontology queries which can be understood in terms of said domain model; an ontology query server which infers one or more answers to ontology queries by reasoning with said domain model, where said ontology query server comprises one or more ontology query languages and programming interfaces; one or more ontology import and loading components; one or more ontology storage components; and one or more reasoning components which apply one or more reasoning rules to one or more facts to infer one or more implied facts and find one or more answers to ontology queries; a SQL query plan generator which composes one or more query plans using a standard query language for relational databases for multi-dimensional analysis including one or more of data grouping, roll-up and drill-down, pivoting, and changing the focused class of the current multi-dimensional analysis; a data federation system which builds one or more adaptors for individual data sources which make data sources appear as relational databases and allow them to be accessed by using a standard query language for relational databases and which also optimizes query plans for performance and processes queries to retrieve data from one or more data sources; and a report generator which provides data retrieved from data sources for multi-dimensional analysis.