Semantic integrity in data warehousing : a framework for understanding : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Business Studies in Information Systems at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Data modelling has gathered an increasing amount of attention by data warehouse developers as they come to realise that important implementation decisions such as data integrity, performance and meta data management, depend on the quality of the underlying data model. Not all organisations model their data but where they do, Entity-Relationship (E-R) modelling, or more correctly relational modelling, has been widely used. An alternative, dimensional modelling, has been gaining acceptance in recent years and adopted by many practitioners. Consequently, there is much debate over which form of modelling is the most appropriate and effective. However, the dimensional model is in fact based on the relational model and the two models are not so different that a debate is necessary. Perhaps, the real focus should be on how to abstract meaning out of the data model. This research explores the importance of semantic integrity during data warehouse design and its impact on the successful use of the implemented warehouse. This has been achieved through a detailed case study. Consequently, a conceptual framework for describing semantic integrity has been developed. The purpose of the framework is to provide a theoretical basis for explaining how a data model is interpreted through the meaning levels of understanding, connotation and generation, and also how a data model is created from an existing meaning structure by intention, generation and action. The result of this exploration is the recognition that the implementation of a data warehouse may not assist with providing a detailed understanding of the semantic content of a data warehouse

Forensic flavour

Databases often receive an uninspired and uninterested response. The curriculum content of a database module generally involves the design of entity-relationship models, SQL programming, application development and advanced database applications such as data warehousing and data mining. These are often taught within the tired and relatively worn case studies of purchase order systems, retail or health care systems. However the current trend for crime scene investigation drama and the frequent stories in the news of personal tragedies involving incorrect data, missing data or data mix-up capture the attention of many. The truth is that crimes require data investigation and expert database witnesses to provide evidence and this requires database knowledge and skill. This project involved the introduction of a ‘forensic flavour’ to the teaching of databases as part of an undergraduate Computing Degree to students. The ‘forensic flavour’ involved introducing investigative and enquiry based learning techniques as well as selecting case studies based around real-life crimes and crime data. The learning objectives remained unchanged for the modules as did the curriculum content. The initial findings are that the students engaged on average 40% better and enjoyed the experience more

Sustainable supply chain management in city logistics solutions: an experience's comeback from Cityporto Padua (Italy)

The sustainable logistics and transportation studies constitute a primordial research axis in the enterprises' governance. In the last years, many reflections and developments in logistics research have studied the economic and the environmental questions related to supply chain management, but only few of them consider sustainability in its totality. Moreover, in practice, city logistics systems conception and planning is currently following a sustainable approach. The aim of this paper is to start a reflection about the three dimensions of sustainable supply chain management (economic, environmental and social), and illustrate these concepts by the results of an experience's comeback from a city logistics system, Cityporto (Padua, Italy).Sustainable Supply Chain Management; experience's comeback; urban freight distribution

Data Challenges in High-Performance Risk Analytics

Risk Analytics is important to quantify, manage and analyse risks from the manufacturing to the financial setting. In this paper, the data challenges in the three stages of the high-performance risk analytics pipeline, namely risk modelling, portfolio risk management and dynamic financial analysis is presented

Improving lifecycle query in integrated toolchains using linked data and MQTT-based data warehousing

The development of increasingly complex IoT systems requires large engineering environments. These environments generally consist of tools from different vendors and are not necessarily integrated well with each other. In order to automate various analyses, queries across resources from multiple tools have to be executed in parallel to the engineering activities. In this paper, we identify the necessary requirements on such a query capability and evaluate different architectures according to these requirements. We propose an improved lifecycle query architecture, which builds upon the existing Tracked Resource Set (TRS) protocol, and complements it with the MQTT messaging protocol in order to allow the data in the warehouse to be kept updated in real-time. As part of the case study focusing on the development of an IoT automated warehouse, this architecture was implemented for a toolchain integrated using RESTful microservices and linked data.Comment: 12 pages, worksho

Driving continuous improvement

The quality of improvement depends on the quality of leading and lagging performance indicators. For this reason, several tools, such as process mapping, cause and effect analysis and FMEA, need to be used in an integrated way with performance measurement models, such as balanced scorecard, integrated performance measurement system, performance prism and so on. However, in our experience, this alone is not quite enough due to the amount of effort required to monitor performance indicators at operational levels. The authors find that IT support is key to the successful implementation of performance measurement-driven continuous improvement schemes

Modeling views in the layered view model for XML using UML

In data engineering, view formalisms are used to provide flexibility to users and user applications by allowing them to extract and elaborate data from the stored data sources. Conversely, since the introduction of Extensible Markup Language (XML), it is fast emerging as the dominant standard for storing, describing, and interchanging data among various web and heterogeneous data sources. In combination with XML Schema, XML provides rich facilities for defining and constraining user-defined data semantics and properties, a feature that is unique to XML. In this context, it is interesting to investigate traditional database features, such as view models and view design techniques for XML. However, traditional view formalisms are strongly coupled to the data language and its syntax, thus it proves to be a difficult task to support views in the case of semi-structured data models. Therefore, in this paper we propose a Layered View Model (LVM) for XML with conceptual and schemata extensions. Here our work is three-fold; first we propose an approach to separate the implementation and conceptual aspects of the views that provides a clear separation of concerns, thus, allowing analysis and design of views to be separated from their implementation. Secondly, we define representations to express and construct these views at the conceptual level. Thirdly, we define a view transformation methodology for XML views in the LVM, which carries out automated transformation to a view schema and a view query expression in an appropriate query language. Also, to validate and apply the LVM concepts, methods and transformations developed, we propose a view-driven application development framework with the flexibility to develop web and database applications for XML, at varying levels of abstraction