Cost Optimisation for Distributed Data Warehouses

Data warehouses are databases that are used for analytical tasks. The common assumption is that data warehouses separate data input out of operational operational databases from output to so-called data marts, which provide data for particular on-line analytical processes (OLAP). In this article it is assumed that the data warehouse is distributed of a network and that not all OLAP tasks are supported at all network locations. This implies that only some fagments need to be available locally. A heuristic cost optimisation approach is suggested for setting up local data warehouse fragments. The underlying cost model integrates query and maintenance costs.