Temporal data in management support systems

Following the paradigm of on-line analytical processing (OLAP) every repres entation of business objects in management support systems is multidimensio nal. Dynamic changes of business structures like consolidations have to be modeled in the data warehouse framework. For reasons of consistency in anal ytical applications it is necessary to add temporal components to the data model. Objects and relations between objects will be provided with time sta mps corresponding to known methods of temporal data storage. This enhanceme nt of the OLAP-approach allows even after changes of structural data (dimen sions) an appropriate comparative analysis between arbitrary periods. But a ny access to multidimensional cubes makes it necessary to evaluate a meta c ube.