Unified Dimensional Model (UDM)

This paper provides an introduction to the Unified Dimensional Model (UDM), including the basic end-user model, and a brief overview of the architecture and security models.

Introduction from the document:

An end-user wishing to retrieve information directly from a data source, such as an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) database, faces a number of significant challenges:

• The contents of such data sources are often very hard to understand,
• Information of interest to the user is commonly distributed among multiple heterogeneous data sources.
• While many data sources are orientated towards holding large quantities of transaction level detail, many times the queries necessary to support business decision making involve summary, aggregated information.
• Business rules are generally not encapsulated in the data sources.

The role of a Unified Dimensional Model (UDM) is to provide a bridge between the user and the data sources. A UDM is constructed over one or more physical data sources, and then the end user issues queries against the UDM using one of a variety of client tools, such as Microsoft Excel.

Check it out if you in such situations.