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Data Warehouse Design

The basic concepts of dimensional modeling are facts, dimensions, and measures. Facts represent business transactions and contain measures and context data. Dimensions describe one business dimension and determine the context for facts. Measures are numeric attributes of facts representing business performance relative to dimensions.

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Eri Zuliarso
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333 views29 pages

Data Warehouse Design

The basic concepts of dimensional modeling are facts, dimensions, and measures. Facts represent business transactions and contain measures and context data. Dimensions describe one business dimension and determine the context for facts. Measures are numeric attributes of facts representing business performance relative to dimensions.

Uploaded by

Eri Zuliarso
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The basic concepts of dimensional modeling

are: facts, dimensions and measures.


A fact is a collection of related data items,
consisting of measures and context data.
represents business items or business transactions.
A dimension is a collection of data that
describe one business dimension.
determine the contextual background for the facts;
A measure is a numeric attribute of a fact,
representing the performance or behavior of
the business relative to the dimensions
1. Fact Tables
the large tables in the warehouse schema that store
business measurements.
typically contain facts and foreign keys to the dimension
tables.
Represents data, usually numeric and additive, that can be
analyzed and examined.
Examples include sales, cost, and profit.
2. Dimension Tables
also known as lookup or reference tables,
contain the relatively static data in the warehouse.
store the information normally use to contain queries.
usually textual and descriptive and use them as the row
headers of the result set.
Examples are customers, Location, Time, Suppliers or
products.
A fact table has two types of columns:
1. measurements : those that contain numeric facts
2. those that are foreign keys to dimension tables.
A fact table contains :
detail-level facts
facts that have been aggregated.
Fact tables that contain aggregated facts are
called SUMMARY TABLES.
A fact table usually contains facts with the
same level of aggregation.
A fact table is the primary table in a dimensional
model where the numerical performance
measurements of the business are stored.
We can imagine standing in the marketplace watching
products being sold and writing down the quantity sold and
dollar sales amount each day for each product in each store.
A measurement is taken at the intersection of all the
dimensions (day, product, and store).
This list of dimensions defines the grain of the fact table and
tells us what the scope of the measurement is.
A row in a fact table corresponds to a
measurement.
A measurement is a row in a fact table.
All the measurements in a fact table must be at
the same grain.
The most useful facts are numeric and additive
fact tables have two or more foreign keys, as designated
by the FK notation
When all the keys in the fact table match their respective
primary keys correctly in the corresponding dimension
tables, we say that the tables satisfy referential integrity.
The fact table itself generally has its own
primary key made up of a subset of the foreign
keys.
This key is often called a composite or
concatenated key.
Every fact table in a dimensional model has a
composite key, and conversely, every table that
has a composite key is a fact table.
Fact tables express the many-to-many
relationships between dimensions in
dimensional models.
A dimension is a structure, often composed of
one or more hierarchies, that categorizes data.
Dimensional attributes help to describe the
dimensional value.
normally descriptive, textual values.
Dimension data is typically collected at the
lowest level of detail and then aggregated into
higher-level totals that are more useful for
analysis.
These natural rollups or aggregations within a
dimension table are called hierarchies
dimension tables have many columns or
attributes.
These attributes describe the rows in the
dimension table.
Each dimension is defined by its single primary
key, designated by the PK notation.
Dimension attributes serve as the primary
source of query constraints, groupings, and
report labels.
In a query or report request, attributes are
identified as the by words.
For example, when a user state that he or she
wants to see dollar sales by week by brand,
week and brand must be available as dimension
attributes.
A dimension table may be used in multiple
places if the data warehouse contains multiple
fact tables or contributes data to data marts.
For example:
a product dimension may be used with a sales fact
table and an inventory fact table in the data
warehouse, and also in one or more departmental
data marts.
A dimension such as customer, time, or product
that is used in multiple schemas is called a
conforming dimension
The records in a dimension table establish one-
to-many relationships with the fact table.
Examples : a number of sales to a single customer,
or a number of sales of a single product.
A schema is a collection of database objects,
including tables, views, indexes, and synonyms.
Most data warehouses use a dimensional model
schema
The principal characteristic of a dimensional
model is a set of detailed business facts
surrounded by multiple dimensions that
describe those facts.
When realized in a database, the schema for a
dimensional model contains a central fact table
and multiple dimension tables.
A schema is called a star schema if all dimension
tables can be joined directly to the fact table.
In the star schema design, a single object (the
fact table) sits in the middle and is radically
connected to other surrounding objects
(dimension lookup tables) like a star.
A star schema can be simple or complex.
A simple star consists of one fact table; a
complex star can have more than one fact table.
A schema is called a snowflake schema if one or
more dimension tables do not join directly to
the fact table but must join through other
dimension tables.
For example, a dimension that describes
products may be separated into three tables
(snowflaked).
In a star schema every dimension will have a
primary key.
In a star schema, a dimension table will not
have any parent table.
In a snowflake schema, a dimension table will
have one or more parent tables.
In star schema Hierarchies for the dimensions
are stored in the dimensional table itself.
Hierarchies are broken into separate tables in
snowflake schema.

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