Automated Integration of Heterogeneous Data Warehouse Schemas

Abstract

A federated data warehouse is a logical integration of data warehouses applicable when physical integration is impossible due to privacy policy or legal restrictions. In healthcare systems federated data warehouses are a most feasible source of data for deducing guidelines for evidence-based medicine based on data material from different participating institutions. In order to enable the translation of queries in a federated approach, schemas of the federated warehouse and the local warehouses must be matched. In this paper we present a procedure that enables the matching process for schema structures specific to the multidimensional model of data warehouses: facts, measures, dimensions, aggregation levels and dimensional attributes. Similarities between warehouse-specific structures are computed by using linguistic and structural comparison. The calculated values are used to create necessary mappings.