Method for providing a reverse star schema data model

• US 6,377,934 B1
• Filed: 05/06/1999
• Issued: 04/23/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 01/15/1999
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Byteweavr, LLC (Ascend Innovation Management, LLC)
• Original Assignee: Metaedge
• Inventors: Ortiz, Juan J., Chen, Li-Wen
• Primary Examiner(s): Hafiz, Tario R.
• Assistant Examiner(s): ROBERTSON, DAVID
• Application Number:
  US09/306,677
• Time in Patent Office: 1,083 Days
• Field of Search: 705/10, 707/10, 707/3, 707/5, 707/201, 707/102, 707/101, 717/1
• US Class Current: 705/7.29
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/30 of unstructured textual data document management systems G06F16/93
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0201 Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99943 Generating database or data structure, e.g. via user interface
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing

Abstract

According to the invention, techniques for organizing information from systems in a data warehousing environment are provided. In an exemplary embodiment, the invention provides a method for analyzing data from one or more data sources of an enterprise. The method provides a meta-model based technique for modeling the enterprise data. The enterprise is typically a business activity, but can also be other loci of human activity. Embodiments according to the invention can translate data from a variety of sources to particular database schema in order to provide organization to a data warehousing environment.

Claims

1. A computer based method for data warehousing, comprising:

selecting a template from a plurality of pre-defined ones, said templates embodying a plurality of characteristics of a business;

selecting at least one of a plurality of customer entities from a plurality of pre-defined ones to form of focal group of customer entities, said selecting based upon said template;

defining at least one of a plurality of customer transaction entities and at least one of a plurality of attributes of said customer transaction entities to form a customized group of customer activity components;

defining at least one of a plurality of customer event types in said customer activity components, wherein said customer event types comprise attributes of said customer transaction entities in said customer activity components;

selecting at least one of a plurality of data tables and at least one of a plurality of attributes of said data tables to form a data schema, wherein said data schema is a reverse star data schema;

determining at least one of a plurality of attributes based on data types of tables of said data source;

determining for said attributes at least one of a plurality of primary keys;

creating a data warehouse database from said data schema; and

creating at least one of a plurality of data mapping rules, said mapping rules providing translation information for tables and attributes of said data sources to said data warehouse.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising defining for said attributes at least one of a plurality of foreign keys.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

defining application-specific entities for said customer activity components.

4. The method of claim 3 further comprising:

defining at least one of a plurality of attributes for said application-specific entities.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein said deriving said data types is performed automatically.

6. The method of claim 5 further comprising:

providing to users the capability to make changes to said data types if they choose not to use the automatically derived ones.