Statistical warehousing on the Web: navigating troubled waters

The paper describes the main issues related to the dis- semination of statistical aggregate data on the Web, and DaWinciMD, a Web-enabled multidimensional statistical database. It is shown that statistical databases have several distinguishing features with respect to conventional busi- ness data warehouses, mainly related to problems of pri- vacy preserving and significance of the disseminated data, thus requiring specific adaptations of the usual modeling and interaction paradigms. The main features of DaW- inciMD are illustrated, with a particular focus on the under- lying metadata approach to statistical data modeling and its multidimensional navigation user interface, combining the flexibility of conventional data warehouses with the specific requirements arising from the statistical context.