Abstract:

A data warehouse (DW) is a database that contains historical business information specially structured to facilitate decision-making. Due to having a different focus, data warehouse design differs significantly from traditional database design approaches. There are various factors that impact the design choices for data warehouses. In this paper, two seminal design approaches to data warehousing are explored, while other relevant research work is also critically reviewed. Existing design approaches to data warehousing are predominantly dimensional and entity-relationship (ER) based. These approaches have certain limitations in the context of DW design. Researchers have augmented these approaches from time to time but the focus remained on the schema derivation or transformation. This paper highlights issues with existing design approaches by discussing their pros and cons and draws attention to research issues that need exploration to address limitation of existing DW design approaches.