X-WACoDa - Data Warehousing Design and Advanced Engineering Applications - page 39

Chapter 3
X-WACoDa
An XML-Based Approach for Warehousing
and Analyzing Complex Data
Hadj Mahboubi
Université de Lyon (ERIC Lyon 2), France
Jean-Christian Ralaivao
Université de Lyon (ERIC Lyon 2), France
Sabine Loudcher
Université de Lyon (ERIC Lyon 2), France
Omar Boussaïd
Université de Lyon (ERIC Lyon 2), France
Fadila Bentayeb
Université de Lyon (ERIC Lyon 2), France
Jérôme Darmont
Université de Lyon (ERIC Lyon 2), France
ABSTRACT
Data warehousing and OLAP applications must nowadays handle complex data that are not only nu-
merical or symbolic. The XML language is well-suited to logically and physically represent complex
data. However, its usage induces new theoretical and practical challenges at the modeling, storage and
analysis levels; and a new trend toward XML warehousing has been emerging for a couple of years.
Unfortunately, no standard XML data warehouse architecture emerges. In this chapter, the authors
propose a unified XML warehouse reference model that synthesizes and enhances related work, and fits
into a global XML warehousing and analysis approach we have developed. They also present a software
platform that is based on this model, as well as a case study that illustrates its usage.