Conceptual design and implementation of spatial data warehouses integrating regular grids of points

ABSTRACT

Spatial online analytical processing (OLAP) and spatial data warehouse (SDW) systems are geo-business intelligence technologies that enable the analysis of huge volumes of geographic data. In the last decade, the conceptual design and implementation of SDWs that integrate spatial data, which are represented using the vector model, have been extensively investigated. However, the integration of field data (a continuous representation of spatial data) in SDWs is a recent unresolved research issue. Enhancing SDWs with field data improves the spatio-multidimensional analysis capabilities with continuity and multiresolutions. Motivated by the need for a conceptual design tool and relational online analytical processing (ROLAP) implementation, we propose a UML profile for SDWs that integrates a regular grid of points and supports continuity and multiresolutions. We also propose an efficient implementation of a ROLAP architecture.