A model driven approach for Data Warehouse conceptual design

Despite the extensive diffusion of Data Warehouse (DW) technology, we still miss methods that assist and guide the designer in the conceptual design of DWs. This paper is concerned with DW conceptual design starting from the operational data base schema and user requirements. For this, we propose and illustrate a set of transformation rules between the Entity Relationship (ER) metamodel and On Line Analytic Process (OLAP) metamodel relaying on the principles of Model Driven Architecture (MEDA) for produces a set of candidate multidimensional schemas. Next the automatic generation of multidimensional schemas, we use user requirements to guide the selection of the candidate multidimensional schema most likely to meet user's needs.