Active data warehouses: complementing OLAP with analysis rules

Conventional data warehouses are passive. All tasks related to analysing da ta and making decisions must be carried out manually by analysts. Today's d ata warehouse and OLAP systems offer little support to automatize decision tasks that occur frequently and for which well-established decision procedu res are available. Such a functionality can be provided by extending the co nventional data warehouse architecture with analysis rules, which mimic the work of an analyst during decision making. Analysis rules extend the basic event/condition/action (ECA) rule structure with mechanisms to analyse dat a multidimensionally and to make decisions. The resulting architecture is c alled active data warehouse. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights rese rved.