Validating ETL patterns feasability using alloy

Abstract

The ETL processes can be seen as typical data-oriented workflows composed of dozens of granular tasks that are responsible for the integration of data coming from different data sources. They are one of the most important components of a data warehousing system, strongly influenced by the complexity of business requirements, their changing, and evolution. To facilitate the planning and ETL implementation, a set of patterns specially designed to map standard ETL procedures is presented. They provide a simpler and conceptual perspective that can enrich to enable the generation of execution primitives. Generic models can be built, simplifying process views and providing methods for carrying out the acquired expertise to new applications using well-proven practices. This work demonstrates the fundaments of an ETL pattern-based approach for ETL development, its configuration and validation trough a set of Alloy specifications used to express its structural constraints and behaviour.