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Article

Abstract

This paper aims at developing a 3-tier inter-universities data warehouse prototype for the Egyptian universities. The implementation scope is restricted to the student enrollment process. The bottom-up approach and the multi-tier (3-tier) client/server architecture were used to implement the proposed prototype. The implementation required a number of steps to be undertaken. First, a star schema data warehouse was built based on an operational database of a public university. Second, another star schema data warehouse was built based on an operational database of a private university. Third, data from the two warehouses were abstracted to formulate the inter-universities data warehouse (tier 3). Hence, a data cube based on the resulting interuniversities data warehouse was developed using an OLAP server (tier 2). The data cube is then accessed by a client tool (tier 1) for the purpose of query and analysis. Although two universities were used to implement the interuniversities data warehouse, this scenario could be applied with any number of universities in a quite similar way. This inter-universities prototype is scalable and flexible to retain more than two universities regardless of the size of the operational databases. The interuniversities prototype fosters the coordination between participating universities and supports the decision making process. The proposed system could be used to generate a variety of strategic reports.

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