DSE '03 Preface

Decision systems play an ever increasing role in today's enterprises. The design of these specific information systems requires much expertise. The maturity of methodologies for guiding the designers is not sufficient, leading to systems requiring costly maintenance. Therefore, the purpose of this first International Workshop on Decision Systems Engineering (DSE'03) is to enable participants to present and discuss research and experience on the engineering of these systems. This workshop, held in Klagenfurt/Velden (Austria) on June 17 th , 2003, is organized in conjunction with the 15 th Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE'03). Since data warehouses form the backbone of decision systems, data warehousing is a major topic of DSE. However, the scope of the workshop is not limited to data warehousing and encompasses the engineering of all systems aimed at supporting decision makers. The six papers chosen for presentation (an acceptance rate of 60%) were selected very carefully by the Program Committee in order to ensure a high quality workshop. They address the following topics:-Data warehouse design methods: Providing designers with suitable methods and tools is crucial in order to improve the quality and productivity of data warehousing. This workshop includes one paper describing an approach for automating data warehouse logical design. A second paper presents a quality-based approach for multidimensional schemas design.-Data integration into data warehouses, often referred to as the ETL process i.e. Extract-Transform-Load: The selected papers address two important ETL issues, namely (near) real-time integration of source data into data warehouses and conceptual modeling of ETL processes.-Decision systems applications, often referred to as business intelligence: These applications form the front-office of decision systems and are vital for their success. One paper addresses data mining systems, presenting an application which supports users in learning data mining. Besides the selected research papers, a keynote address deals with the central topic of data integration in the context of data warehouses and decision support systems. The keynote speaker, Diego CALVANESE, is widely known for his expertise on this subject and we gratefully acknowledge his contribution. We wish to thank all the contributors to DSE'03, in particular the authors who submitted papers and the members of the Program Committee who carefully reviewed them. We express our gratitude to the CAiSE'03 Workshop Chairs, Barbara PERNICI and Roland MITTERMEIR, for their helpful support in preparing the workshop. Finally, we thank our colleagues from the Organizing Committee, Jacky AKOKA, Isabelle COMYN-WATTIAU and Elisabeth …