Incorporating Context to Improve Understanding of a Data Warehouse

Abstract

Data warehouses provide the necessary data infrastructure for executive information systems and decision support systems. The design of a data warehouse is a complex and critical activity within the data warehousing process. The corporate data model has been proposed as a tool to support data warehouse design. Although corporate data models are widely used to support data management within organisations, both information systems professionals and business users find them difficult to understand. This paper describes a data warehouse design approach which is intended to facilitate stakeholder understanding by making explicit use of explanation and visualisation mechanisms to incorporate context into the representation of the data warehouse design, and reports a case study of the use of the approach in practice. Three important fmdings about the use of the explanation and visualisation mechanisms emerged from the case study. First, design rationale is an effective means of explaining the evolution of concepts in the data warehouse design for specialist data modellers. Second, scenarios should be used for elicitation of information requirements and to explain abstract concepts in the model to business users. Third, graphical icons and subject area partitions are effective means of visualising the model and lead to improved understanding of the model by business users.