Data Warehouse Design and Management: Theory and Practice

The need to store data and information permanently, for their reuse in later stages, is a very relevant problem in the modern world and now affects a large number of people and economic agents. The storage and subsequent use of data can indeed be a valuable source for decision making or to increase commercial activity. The next step to data storage is the efficient and effective use of information, particularly through the Business Intelligence, at whose base is just the implementation of a Data Warehouse. In the present paper we will analyze Data Warehouses with their theoretical models, and illustrate a practical implementation in a specific case study on a pharmaceutical distribution companyData warehouse, database, data model.

Business intelligence as the support of decision-making processes in e-commerce systems environment

The present state of world economy urges managers to look for new methods, which can help to start the economic growth. To achieve this goal, managers use standard as well as new procedures. The fundamental prerequisite of the efficient decision-making processes are actual and right information. Managers need to monitor past information and current actual information to generate trends of future development based on it. Managers always should define strictly what do they want to know, how do they want to see it and for what purpose do they want to use it. Only in this case they can get right information applicable to efficient decision-making. Generally, managers´ decisions should lead to make the customers´ decision-making process easier. More frequently than ever, companies use e-commerce systems for the support of their business activities. In connection with the present state and future development, cross-border online shopping growth can be expected. To support this, companies will need much better systems providing the managers adequate and sufficient information. This type of information, which is usually multidimensional, can be provided by the Business Intelligence (BI) technologies. Besides special BI systems, some of BI technologies are obtained in quite a few of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems. One of the crucial questions is whether should companies and firms buy or develop special BI software, or whether they can use BI tools contained in some ERP systems. In respect of this, there is a question if the modern ERP systems can provide the managers sufficient possibilities relating to ad-hoc reporting, static and dynamic reports and OLAP analyses. A one of the main goals of this article is to show and verify Business Intelligence tools of Microsoft Dynamics NAV for the support of decision-making in terms of the cross-border online purchasing. Pursuant to above-mentioned, in this article authors deal with problems relating to managers´ decision-making, customers´ decision-making and a support of its using the BI tools contained in ERP system Microsoft Dynamics NAV. A great deal of this article is aimed at area of multidimensional data which are the source data of e-commerce systems.Business Intelligence, decision-making, e-commerce system, cross-border online purchasing, multi-dimensional data, reporting, data visualization

Implementing data-driven decision support system based on independent educational data mart

Decision makers in the educational field always seek new technologies and tools, which provide solid, fast answers that can support decision-making process. They need a platform that utilize the students’ academic data and turn them into knowledge to make the right strategic decisions. In this paper, a roadmap for implementing a data driven decision support system (DSS) is presented based on an educational data mart. The independent data mart is implemented on the students’ degrees in 8 subjects in a private school (Al-Iskandaria Primary School in Basrah province, Iraq). The DSS implementation roadmap is started from pre-processing paper-based data source and ended with providing three categories of online analytical processing (OLAP) queries (multidimensional OLAP, desktop OLAP and web OLAP). Key performance indicator (KPI) is implemented as an essential part of educational DSS to measure school performance. The static evaluation method shows that the proposed DSS follows the privacy, security and performance aspects with no errors after inspecting the DSS knowledge base. The evaluation shows that the data driven DSS based on independent data mart with KPI, OLAP is one of the best platforms to support short-to-long term academic decisions

Designing secure data warehouses by using MDA and QVT

The Data Warehouse (DW) design is based on multidimensional (MD) modeling which structures information into facts and dimensions. Due to the confidentiality of the data that it stores, it is crucial to specify security and audit measures from the early stages of design and to enforce them throughout the lifecycle. Moreover, the standard framework for software development, Model Driven Architecture (MDA), allows us to define transformations between models by proposing Query/View/Transformations (QVT). This proposal permits the definition of formal, elegant and unequivocal transformations between Platform Independent Models (PIM) and Platform Specific Models (PSM). This paper introduces a new framework for the design of secure DWs based on MDA and QVT, which covers all the design phases (conceptual, logical and physical) and specifies security measures in all of them. We first define two metamodels with which to represent security and audit measures at the conceptual and logical levels. We then go on to define a transformation between these models through which to obtain the traceability of the security rules from the early stages of development to the final implementation. Finally, in order to show the benefits of our proposal, it is applied to a case study.This work has been partially supported by the METASIGN project (TIN2004-00779) from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, of the Regional Government of Valencia, and by the QUASIMODO and MISTICO projects of the Regional Science and Technology Ministry of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain)

The Use of Olap Reporting Technology to Improve Patient Care Services Decision Making Within the University Health Center

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that it is feasible for the student health center to leverage existing clinical data in a data warehouse by using OLAP reporting in order to improve patient care and health care services decision making. Historically, University health care centers have relied mainly on operational data sources for critical health care decision making. These sources of data do not contain enough information to allow health officials to recognize trends or predict how future changes in health care services might vastly improve overall heath care. Four proof of concept artifacts are constructed through design science research methodology, and a feasibility study is presented to build the case for the adoption of OLAP reporting technology. The study concludes that it is feasible to implement an OLAP reporting infrastructure at the student health center if physicians, clinical staff, and administration clearly define the need for the new technology, develop proper data extraction, loading, and transformation strategy, and adequately provide project management and data warehouse design towards the implementation of the solution

An architecture for automatically developing secure OLAP applications from models

Context: Decision makers query enterprise information stored in Data Warehouses (DW) by using tools (such as On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) tools) which use specific views or cubes from the corporate DW or Data Marts, based on the multidimensional modeling. Since the information managed is critical, security constraints have to be correctly established in order to avoid unauthorized accesses. Objective: In previous work we have defined a Model-Driven based approach for developing a secure DWs repository by following a relational approach. Nevertheless, is also important to define security constraints in the metadata layer that connects the DWs repository with the OLAP tools, that is, over the same multidimensional structures that final users manage. This paper defines a proposal to develop secure OLAP applications and incorporates it into our previous approach. Method: Our proposal is composed of models and transformations. Our models have been defined using the extension capabilities from UML (conceptual model) and extending the OLAP package of CWM with security (logical model). Transformations have been defined by using a graphical notation and implemented into QVT and MOFScript. Finally, this proposal has been evaluated through case studies. Results: A complete MDA architecture for developing secure OLAP applications. The main contributions of this paper are: improvement of a UML profile for conceptual modeling; definition of a logical metamodel for OLAP applications; and definition and implementation of transformations from conceptual to logical models, and from logical models to the secure implementation into a specific OLAP tool (SSAS). Conclusion: Our proposal allows us to develop secure OLAP applications, providing a complete MDA architecture composed of several security models and automatic transformations towards the final secure implementation. Security aspects are early identified and fitted into a most robust solution that provides us a better information assurance and a saving of time in maintenance.This research is part of the following Projects: SIGMA-CC (TIN2012-36904), GEODAS-BC (TIN2012-37493-C01) and GEODAS-BI (TIN2012-37493-C03) funded by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional FEDER. SERENIDAD (PEII11-037-7035) and MOTERO (PEII11- 0399-9449) funded by the Consejería de Educación, Ciencia y Cultura de la Junta de Comunidades de Castilla La Mancha, and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional FEDER