A Framework for Multi-Source Information Systems Development

A Multi-Source Information System (MSIS) is composed of a set of independent data sources and a set of views that define user requirements. Its differences with classical information systems introduced new design activities and motivated the development of new techniques. In this paper we present a general framework that allows an easy integration of design and maintenance tools through a common metadata platform that centralizes the inter-application data management and the integrity control routines. We study a particular case of MSIS: a Data Warehouse (DW) and propose a model to represent its metadata from two points of view: the schema representation and the inter-schema relationships that allow to calculate an object from another ones. Our work includes the development of a prototype that implements the DW metadata model as the core of the design platform.