towards a more straightforward and more expressive metamodel for sdw modeling
There are works that propose metamodels for SDW modeling. However, we observe that most of these works defines metamodels that mix concepts of DW modeling with concepts of the OLAP cube modeling. We disagree with this view, because we understand that a DW is essentially a database, which can be analyzed/queried by any data analysis tool. Moreover, we also note other limitations. For example: the most proposed metamodels 1) do not support important techniques for DW modeling and 2) represent the spatiality in a SDW stereotyping the dimensions and fact tables as spatial or hybrid, rather than simply stereotyping the attributes/measures as spatial. Aiming to solve these problems we propose a more straightforward and more expressive metamodel for SDW modeling, named Spatial Data Warehouse Metamodel (SDWM), which describes the constructors and the restrictions needed to model and validate a SDW schema. As a proof of concept, we implemented a CASE tool according to our metamodel and, with this CASE tool, we designed a SDW for the Meteorological Laboratory from the State of Pernambuco, in Brazil.
metamodel spatial data warehouse case tool