Patent ID: 7139779

Claim:
A method of developing an extract/transform/load (ETL) system, said ETL system comprising a sequence of operations performed by at least one application program, said method comprising: generating a metafile for use by the application program in the ETL system for controlling the operation of the application program, said generating occurring in accordance with a data flow diagram describing the ETL system, said generating comprising: receiving an input format representative of an input to the ETL system; receiving a report format representative of a report for a data warehouse to produce from data input according to the input format and stored in the data warehouse; and sequencing the at least one application program such that the application program, when executed, transforms the data input according to the input format to the report format prior to loading the data into the data warehouse; and generating an installation script for installing the generated metafile and the application program on a computer such that the installed application program executes per the generated metafile to implement the ETL system.