DWARM: An Ontology of Data Warehouse Architecture Reference Model

This paper describes DWARM, an ontology formalizing a new data warehouse architecture reference model intended do capture common five architectural approaches, as well as to provide means for describing complex hybrid architectures that emerge due to observed evolution of business and technology. The ontology defines concepts, e.g. layers, processes, containers and property classes, as well as relations that can be used to construct precise architectural models. Formalization of architecture description as an ontology gives an opportunity to perform automatic or semiautomatic validation and assessment.