Ontology-Based Big Dimension Modeling in Data Warehouse Schema Design

During data warehouse schema design, designers often encounter how to model big dimensions that typically contain a large number of attributes and records. To investigate effective approaches for modeling big dimensions is necessary in order to achieve better query performance, with respect to response time.

In most cases, the big dimension modeling process is complicated since it usually requires accurate description of business semantics, multiple design revisions and comprehensive testings. In this paper, we present the design methods for modeling big dimensions, which include horizontal partitioning, vertical partitioning and their hybrid.

We formalize the design methods, and propose an algorithm that describes the modeling process from an OWL ontology to a data warehouse schema. In addition, this paper also presents an effective ontology-based tool to automate the modeling process. The tool can automatically generate the data warehouse schema from the ontology of describing the terms and business semantics for the big dimension.

In case of any change in the requirements, we only need to modify the ontology, and re-generate the schema using the tool. This paper also evaluates the proposed methods based on sample sales data mart.