A secured agent-based framework for data warehouse management

Managing data warehouses (DWs) is typically characterized by intensive data processing and protracted activities which usually degrade performance. Moreover, DWs are usually designed with the overall objective of making available the content to users, and for them to stay alive, all the management phases need to interact with external and heterogeneous sources. These obviously expose the system to wider security issues. In order to enhance the overall systems performance, we present a scheme that utilizes the mobility characteristic of agents to handle DW activities. The scheme is also designed with well-defined communication interfaces within the agent structures in order to improve on the security, where communications within the DW must be done through communicators that require authentications.