Patent ID: 8892504

Claim:
A data warehouse system comprising: one or more computer systems, a warehouse database hosted by said one or more computer systems; a data warehouse manager hosted by the one or more computer systems configured to (i) store metadata providing definitions of objects stored in the warehouse database and (ii) perform metadata reconciliation to update metadata of the objects stored in the warehouse database to reflect a change to metadata of a first object by: identifying metadata of a first set of objects which depend on the first object and are impacted by the change to the metadata of the first object based on a dependency model having a set of rules that govern relationships between objects, metadata of each object in the first set of objects defining its corresponding object differently from the metadata of the first object; identifying metadata of a second set of objects on which the first object depends and are impacted by the change to the metadata of the first object based on the dependency model, metadata of each object in the second set of objects defining its corresponding object differently from the metadata of the first object; suggesting to a user via a user interface at least one task to propagate the impact of the change to the metadata of the first object to metadata of at least one object in the first and second sets of objects; determining one or more additional tasks to propagate a determined impact of a determined change to metadata of an object based on whether definitions of objects in the first or second sets of objects change in response to completion of the at least one task; and suggesting to the user via the user interface the one or more additional tasks determined based on whether the definitions of objects in the first and second sets of objects change in response to completion of the at least one task.