A methodological framework for data warehouse design

Though designing a data warehouse requires techniques completely different from those adopted for operational systems, no significant effort has been made so far to develop a complete and consistent design methodology for data warehouses. In this paper we outline a general methodological framework for data warehouse design, based on our Dimensional Fact Model (DFM). After analyzing the existing information system and collecting the user requirements, conceptual design is carried out semi-automatically starting from the operational database scheme. A workload is then characterized in terms of data volumes and expected queries, to be used as the input of the logical and physical design phases whose output is the final scheme for the data warehouse.