Metadata to Support Data Warehouse Evolution

The focus of this chapter is metadata necessary to support data warehouse evolution. We present the data warehouse framework that is able to track evolution process and adapt data warehouse schemata and data extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) processes. We discuss the significant part of the framework, the metadata repository that stores information about the data warehouse, logical and physical schemata and their versions. We propose the physical implementation of multiversion data warehouse in a relational DBMS. For each modification of a data warehouse schema, we outline the changes that need to be made to the repository metadata and in the database.