Cubes

[jeshaw2]

Does the OMG Warehouse model support Cubes?

[«Midnight»]

Not directly. It is not a data warehouse design profile along the lines of the Data Modeling Profile for UML that IBM published (before they acquired Rational I think).

Although you certainly can model warehouses - cubes and such in particular - with the CWM, it can do a whole lot more. If you (have available and) take the time to use the power of this tool, end results can be very rewarding. IBM has used this as the backbone of WebSphere for example.

The OMG CWM is a very powerful metamodel, build along the MOF. In fact, CWM is the first of the 'aligned' metamodels that OMG published. UML 2 and the new MOF complete the set of 'big' metamodels; and after all these years they are (mostly) aligned, so they don't treat primitive components differently (as the 1.x versions of UML and MOF did).

[sbockheim]

Midnight,

Do you have any examples on CWM modeling in EA that you can share?


Thanks,

Scott

[«Midnight»]

Not off hand. However, as of EA 6.1 we could directly import the OMG XMI file for CWM. You can find it in part 3 of the CWM files on the OMG site at http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/doc?ad/2001-02-03.

Actually making use of the metamodel is quite a task. There are a (very) few books from OMG that will give you a start. Some are no longer in print, but can be purchased in soft copy from Amazon and perhaps others. This is a big subject, not just a "warehouse design" issue. Still, if you are constructing large scale systems (not just data oriented stuff) or need some kind of verifiable structures this may be worth the effort.

David

[sbockheim]

I have imprted the metamodel from OMG. Its nice that i can see all the elements but it really doesnt show me how to use them.  Would you suggest somethingelse for warehouse modeling. I am interested in it because SAP and Cognos both say they support it, and could be a valuable modeling langauge to support our efforts.

Scott

[«Midnight»]

Start with Amazon, then read, read, read...

Note that this is likely to take you well beyond database design.

[sbockheim]

Thanks for the help.