 An approach to IT system specification that separates

the specification of system functionality from the

specification of the implementation of that
functionality on a particular technology platform
 “Design once, build it on any platform”
 Models of different systems are structured
explicitly into:
 Platform Independent Models (PIM)
 Platform Specific Models (PSM)
 The MDA will help you integrate what you have today,
and give you an architecture to support the unexpected
 Integrate what you have, with what you build
 Models are the core; design is the focus
 There are two basic types of models has to be
designed:
 Initial model
 Derived model
 Initial models are created manually by human agents
while derived models are created automatically by
programs.
 Unified Modeling Language
 UMLTM remains the world’s only standardized object-oriented
modeling language, best-known part of the standard
 Common Warehouse Metamodel
 CWMTM, the integration of the last two data warehousing
initiatives
 Meta-Object Facility
 MOFTM, the metadata integration standard
 Defines metadata & metadata services
 XML Metadata Interchange
 XMITM, the XML-UML standard
 Actually just a collection of mapping rules XML/MOF
MOF(Meta object facility)
 MOF is designed as a four-layered architecture. It provides a
meta-meta model at the top layer, called the M3 layer.

 This M3-model is the language used by MOF to build

metamodels, called M2-models.

 These M2-models describe elements of the M1-layer, and thus

M1-models.

 The last layer is the M0-layer or data layer. It is used to describe

real-world objects.
CWM File Structure
XMI File

XMI:Header
Documentation, Metadata…

XMI:Content - Catalog
OLAP Schemas (logical)
Mappings of each table
Column to each cube
Dimensions

RDB Schemas (physical)

Listing of all
Tables and columns

Copyright 2005, 2006 Dan McCreary & Associates 8 of 50

CWM is Built on XMI
 XML is XML Metadata Interchange
 XMI uses XML files and XML Schema to describe
metadata
 XML is built on another OMG standard called (MOF)
 CWM extends a simplified subset of XMI and adds
new metadata elements

Copyright 2005, 2006 Dan McCreary & Associates 9 of 50

CWM and Java
 CWM implementations are all Java
 Sample implementations are all Java
 XMI has a Java API (called Java Metadata Interface)
 Class libraries are all Java
 Microsoft is not a CWM supporter

Copyright 2005, 2006 Dan McCreary & Associates 10 of 50

Learner Assumption
 Understand basics of dimensional analysis and the
structure of a “cube”
 Dimensions classify data into “buckets”
 Measures are summed and averaged
 Understand XML Schemas and XMLSpy™ schema
notation
 Model types
 Cardinality
 Optional
 Types

Copyright 2005, 2006 Dan McCreary & Associates 11 of 50

Disadvantages of HTML – Need for
XML
 HTML lacks syntax checking
 HTML lacks structure
 HTML is not suitable for data interchange
 HTML is not context aware
 HTML does not allow us to describe the information
content or the semantics of the document
 HTML is not object-oriented
 HTML is not re-usable
 HTML is not extensible
Introduction to XML
 XML – Extensible Markup Language
 Extensible – capable of being extended
 Markup – it is a way of adding information to the text
indicating the logical components of a document
 How is it different from HTML?
 HTML was designed to display data
 XML was designed to store, describe and transport data
 XML is also a markup language like HTML
 XML tags are not predefined – we must design our own
tags.
Advantages of XML - 1
 XML simplifies data sharing
 Since XML data is stored in plain text format, data can
be easily shared among different hardware and
software platforms.
 XML separates data from HTML
 To display dynamic data in HTML, the code must be
rewritten each time the data changes. With XML, data
can be stored in separate files so that whenever the
data changes it is automatically displayed correctly. We
have to design the HTML for layout only once
Advantages of XML - 2
 XML simplifies data transport
 With XML, data can be easily exchanged between different
platforms.
 XML makes data more available
 Since XML is independent of hardware, software and
application, XML can make your data more available and
useful.
 Different applications can access your data in HTML pages
 XML provides a means to package almost any type of
information (binary, text, voice, video) for delivery to a
receiving end.
 HTML relies heavily on ASCII which makes using
foreign characters very difficult. XML uses Unicode so
that many European and Asian languages are also
handled easily.
XML Document – Example 1
 The first line is the XML declaration.
 It defines the XML version (1.0)
 It gives the encoding used (ISO-8859-1 = Latin-1/West
European character set)
 The XML declaration is actually a processing instruction
(PI) an it is identified by the ? At its start and end
 The next line describes the root element of the document
(like saying: "this document is a class_list“)
 The next 2 lines describe 2 child elements of the root
(student, name, and grade)
 And finally the last line defines the end of the root
element: