DYNAMIC GENERATION OF DIMENSIONAL METADATA

The invention introduces a methodology to automatically derive the relationships between tables and columns within tables so that problems such as those that result in double counting of information are avoided. It comprises a method for creati ng a report by first defining a model based on an existing database comprising two or mo re querySubjects, each querySubject comprising at least one fact column and one primary key column, then generating a hierarchy within the model. Next a further fac t is introduced into one of the querySubjects. The expression is decomposed into sub-queries so that double-counting of data in ambiguously defined situations is prevent ed using the further fact to determine that such decomposition is required. Finally, the data is accessed using the sub-queries, and a report is produced.