Abstract: A system and method is capable of providing a much more effective enterprise-wide decision support system. It consists of an integrated end-to-end solution including automatic generation of data warehouses or data marts integrated with automatic delivery of information from the data warehouses or data marts to knowledge workers throughout the enterprise using a "publish and subscribe" paradigm for dissemination of the information at any time, to any places, in any formats to any number of knowledge workers. This integration allows information in the data warehouses or data marts to be delivered immediately after every refresh of the data warehouses or data marts thereby allowing maximum utilization of the valuable information in the data warehouses or data marts throughout the enterprise to gain the most optimum decision support.

Abstract: An end user query technology is taught which is capable of automatically understanding the database model and guiding the user to scout for the desired information, thereby increasing productivity and ease of information access. The user is freed from the need to understanding the database model, with the end user query facility of this invention quickly guiding the user to acquire the information. This is made possible by the end user query facility of this invention first recapturing the application semantics from the existing database model to provide a set of derived semantics. The derived semantics are then used by the end user query facility to intelligently guide the user to scout for the desired information in the database. In addition, the derived semantics can be easily updated by the end user query facility when the database model is changed.