Towards a common data framework for analytical environments

Inbusinesscontexts,datafromseveralsourcesareusuallycollected, integrated, stored and analyzed to support decision-making at the operational, tactical or strategic organizational levels. For these several levels, with different data needs, this paper proposes a Common Data Framework for identifying and modeling the different data repositories that support those data needs. The proposed approach considers all the business needs expressed in business pro- cesses models and that were useful in the identification of the operational data model, for on-line transaction processing, the analytical data model, for a data warehousing system, and on-line analytical processing cubes for a traditional Business Intelligence environment. Besides providing an integrated framework in which the data models complement each other, this approach also allows checking the conformity of the data stored in the different repositories, being possible to identify business requirements that were not properly modeled.This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER- 007043 and FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013, and by Portugal Incentive System for Research and Technological Development, Project in co-promotion no 002814/2015 (iFACTORY 2015–2018)