SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR SPECIFYING METADATA EXTENSION INPUT FOR EXTENDING DATA WAREHOUSE

• US 20110295791A1
• Filed: 05/03/2011
• Published: 12/01/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 05/28/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Venkatasubramanian, Raghuram, Chowdhury, Saugata, Vigeant, Jacques, Bolsius, Roger, Pan, Harvard, Mascarenhas, Alextair, Venkata, Ananth, Surendran, Venugopal
• Granted Patent: US 9,535,965 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/600
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/254 Extract, transform and load [ETL] procedures, e.g. ETL data flows in data warehouses
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/283 Multi-dimensional databases or data warehouses, e.g. MOLAP or ROLAP

Abstract

An input extension specification can be generated, via an administration tool on a business intelligence (BI) server, for an extender associated with a data warehouse in order to extend the data warehouse. The administration tool can request for data flow information of the data warehouse from the extender. The data flow information indicates the mapping relationship between one or more source data objects and one or more target tables in the data warehouse. The administration tool further allows a user to select said one or more target tables in the data warehouse to be extended based on the data flow information, and builds the input extension specification for the extender.

Claims

1. A method for supporting data flexibility in a business intelligence (BI) server associated with a data warehouse, comprising:

receiving a data flow information for the data warehouse from a extender associated with the data warehouse, wherein the data flow information indicates the mapping relationship between one or more source data objects and one or more target tables in the data warehouse;

allowing a user to select the one or more target tables to be extended based on the data flow information; and

building an input extension specification for the extender to extend the data warehouse.

2. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

receiving an output document from the extender, wherein the output document contains information on one or more target tables to be extended.

3. The method according to claim 2, further comprising:

using the output document to update the repository model maintained in the BI server.

4. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

making a call to a remote service that is a wrapper of the extender.

5. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

connecting to the extender based on a connection document that is specific to the underlying data warehouse.

6. The method according to claim 3, further comprising:

containing in the connection document connection information that includes a master driver, a master URL, a master username and a master password.

7. The method according to claim 3, further comprising:

containing in the connection document connection information that includes basic connection information, database connection information, and data source connection information.

8. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

determining the data flow lineage information based on either a push dependency method or a pull dependency method.

9. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

representing the data flow lineage information in an XML file.

10. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

specifying metadata extension on one or more dimensions before specifying metadata extension on one or more facts.

11. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

mixing metadata extension specifications for dimensions and facts, while separating metadata extension specifications for key and descriptive flex.

12. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

using an input specification to at least one of;

create a new flex based dimension,

create a new foreign key on a dimension,

provide a fact with a new foreign key to a dimension,

provide a fact with new attributes, and

propogate extension changes to post load process facts.

13. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

using a container-mapping configuration to restrict scope of extension to one or more registered containers.

14. A system for providing data flexibility in a business intelligence server associated with a data warehouse, comprising:

one or more processors;

an administration tool, running on the one or more processors, that can receive a data flow information for the data warehouse from a extender associated with the data warehouse;

allow a user to select one or more target tables to be extended based on the data flow information; and

build an input extension specification for the extender to extend the data warehouse.

15. A machine readable medium having instructions stored thereon that when executed cause a system to:

receive a data flow information for the data warehouse from a extender associated with the data warehouse;

allow a user to select one or more target tables to be extended based on the data flow information; and

build an input extension specification for the extender to extend the data warehouse.