![](bg8.png)
Figure 10: MD modeling in Rational Rose.
models at different levels of abstraction. Moreover,
the importation mechanism in the UML simplifies the
use of an element from one package in another pack-
age. In this way, we avoid the problems related to the
redefinition of an element several times: redundancy,
inconsistency, and ambiguity.
Our MD modeling approach can be continued fol-
lowing several different research lines. Firstly, we are
considering the implementation of the MD concep-
tual models on pure MD databases, object-relational
databases (ORDB), and OO databases (OODB). Due
to the OO nature of our MD conceptual approach,
we are studying the implementation in ORDB and
OODB. Since our MD approach is semantically rich,
we will need to define our own metadata to sup-
port all the expressiveness power of the approach.
Secondly, we also plan to include different imple-
mentation strategies, e.g., the option of normaliz-
ing (snowflake structure) or denormalizing (only one
structure) the dimension hierarchies. Finally, we are
also considering incorporating UML use cases into
our MD conceptual approach. These diagrams will
allow us to partition the functionality of OLAP appli-
cations in an early stage of the analysis phase.
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