DW-BI Research

Knowledge Base for DWH/BI Industrialization

Currently, the development of DWH/BI infrastructure may be seen as a complex discipline in which solution-oriented expertise is required. For this reason, companies frequently involve external consultants who are specialized in the customization of dedicated solutions and these are customizable software systems. Consulting companies should be interested to maintain their project experience as a reusable consulting knowledge base. In this project the situation of DWH/BI consulting is considered. It should be analyzed which elements are most valuable. How can an appropriate knowledge base be structured? Which level of abstraction is useful to make captured knowledge entities reusable? Are there any methods to capture artifacts from consulting projects and how can conceptual models or patterns be used to help delivering DWH/BI artifacts?

Pattern-oriented approaches offer the chance to build a knowledge base which pays off in the long run when applied on reoccurring tasks. In a current research project it is considered how reference models, recommendations, best practices, principles and many more may contribute to the industrialization of DWH/BI, and in which way they can help to increase the BI applicability and DWH agility while decreasing cost and time to deliver.

Towards a Data Warehouse – Business Intelligence Ontology

As in many IT-related fields lots of definitions are found for central Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence concepts. Sometimes this overcrowding possibilities to define leaves students puzzled.

But what do we expect from a definition for Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence concepts?

From a mathematical point of view we would expect that a definition makes it possible do discriminate between instances and non-instances of a concept. Typically,  properties or conditions are declared which have to fulfilled to make the candidate an instance of the concept or a member element of a set.

But in the domain of Data Warehouse – Business Intelligence it seems different. The Oxford Dictionaries for example offer this definition of „definition„: „definition – definition of definition in English from the Oxford dictionary: „A statement of the exact meaning of a word, especially in a dictionary“ (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/definition, 3.Dec.2015).

Here, semiotics helps to get a clear picture. Words are nothing more than signs or symbols for a conceptualization. And the meaning of a word is subjective as it depends on the context of its usage and especially of the background that the person has in mind who uses it. But we need a sufficient intersection of the conceptualizations of persons using words to talk about concepts. This is the point where an ontology may help as a „specification of a shared conceptualization“ as declared by Borst, Studer and other.