Using Ontologies for the Design of Data Warehouses

TL;DR

This paper explores how ontologies can improve data warehouse design by addressing current shortcomings, aiming to simplify the complex process and enhance reliability.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of applying ontologies to data warehouse design, highlighting potential benefits and serving as a foundation for further research.

Findings

Identifies key challenges in current data warehouse design

Proposes ontologies as a solution to improve design processes

Suggests ontologies can reduce errors and increase efficiency

Abstract

Obtaining an implementation of a data warehouse is a complex task that forces designers to acquire wide knowledge of the domain, thus requiring a high level of expertise and becoming it a prone-to-fail task. Based on our experience, we have detected a set of situations we have faced up with in real-world projects in which we believe that the use of ontologies will improve several aspects of the design of data warehouses. The aim of this article is to describe several shortcomings of current data warehouse design approaches and discuss the benefit of using ontologies to overcome them. This work is a starting point for discussing the convenience of using ontologies in data warehouse design.