Towards a Formal Validation of ETL Patterns Behaviour

Abstract

The development of ETL systems has been the target of many research efforts to support its development and implementation. In the last few years, we presented a pattern-oriented approach to develop these systems. Basically, patterns are comprised by a set of abstract components that can be configured to enable its instantiation for specific scenarios. Even when using high-level components, the ETL systems are very specific processes that represent complex data requirements and transformation routines. Several operational requirements need to be configured and system correctness is hard to validate, which can result in several implementation problems. In this paper, a set of formal specifications in Alloy is presented to express the structural constraints and behaviour of a slowly changing dimension pattern. Then, specific physical models can be generated based on formal specifications and constraints defined in an Alloy model, helping to ensure the correctness of the configuration provided.