Modeling data warehouses is a complex task focusing, very often, into internal structures and implementation issues. In this paper we argue that, in order to accurately reflect the users requirements into an error-free, understandable, and easily extendable data warehouse schema, special attention should be paid at the conceptual modeling phase. Based on a real mortgage business warehouse environment, we present a set of user modeling requirements and we discuss the involved concepts. Understanding the semantics of these concepts, allow us to build a conceptual model− namely, the starER model− for their efficient handling. More specifically, the starER model combines the star structure, which is dominant in data warehouses, with the semantically rich constructs of the ER model; special types of relationships have been further added to support hierarchies. We present an evaluation of the starER model as well as a comparison of the proposed model with other existing models, pointing ...
Nectaria Tryfona, Frank Busborg, Jens G. Borch Chr