Behavioral ontological analysis of processes in data warehousing/business intelligence systems using UFO-B

The acquisition, processing, and utilization of data have become increasingly critical in data warehouse (DWH) and business intelligence (BI) systems. However, the current approaches to modeling these systems—relying on natural language descriptions, informal diagrams, or UML models often introduce ambiguity and inconsistencies, making it difficult to ensure clear communication between researchers and industry professionals, particularly for complex DWH processes.To address this issue, we explore the use of ontologically driven conceptual modeling based on UFO-B as a means to enhance clarity, precision, and consistency in representing DWH/BI processes. By leveraging UFO-B’s formal semantics for modeling dynamic aspects such as events, processes, and temporal relations, we aim to demonstrate how it can improve the expressiveness and interpretability of DWH/BI models. As part of this investigation, we also propose an extension of OntoUML to incorporate missing UFO-B constructs, allowing for a more comprehensive and semantically rich representation of behavioral aspects in DWH/BI systems. Through this approach, we aim to showcase both the feasibility and benefits of applying ontologically grounded methods in this domain.