A model driven approach for spatial data warehouses development

Abstract

Designing a spatial data warehouse is a highly complex, prone to fail, and time consuming task, due to (i) the heterogeneous spatial information needs of decision makers and their continuous changes, and (ii) the available spatial data sources that will populate the data warehouse must be considered in order to obtain the final implementation of the conceptual multidimensional modeling. However, no significant effort has been made to take these issues into account in a systematic, well structured and comprehensive development process. To overcome the lack of such a process, this PhD Thesis proposes a model-driven approach for the development of a hybrid spatial multidimensional model at the conceptual level and for the automatic derivation of its logical representation as a basis of implementation. A personalization process is also proposed in order to provide support for every users and needs. Finally, an Eclipse-based tool has been implemented as a proof of concept of this research. This tool has been used in a case study, which shows each step of the presented approach.