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Dimensional Models

The document discusses various modeling techniques used in data design, primarily focusing on Entity-Relationship (ER) modeling and Dimensional modeling for data warehouses. It outlines the characteristics of different schemas, including star, snow flake, galaxy, and fact constellation schemas, highlighting their structures and uses. Star schemas are the most common, featuring a central fact table surrounded by dimensional tables, while snow flake schemas enhance this by adding additional dimensions.

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2 views2 pages

Dimensional Models

The document discusses various modeling techniques used in data design, primarily focusing on Entity-Relationship (ER) modeling and Dimensional modeling for data warehouses. It outlines the characteristics of different schemas, including star, snow flake, galaxy, and fact constellation schemas, highlighting their structures and uses. Star schemas are the most common, featuring a central fact table surrounded by dimensional tables, while snow flake schemas enhance this by adding additional dimensions.

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gattuazure
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© All Rights Reserved
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MODELS

ENTITY-RELATIONSHIP MODELING (ER):

Entity-relationship modeling is a logical design technique that seeks to eliminate data


redundancy. ER models show the relationship between data. These models are difficult to read
and understand unless trained in the model methodology. Also, it is difficult to understand the
business from viewing the ER model.

DIMENSIONAL MODELING:

Dimensional modeling is the name of a logical design technique used for data warehouses.
Every dimensional model is composed of a “fact” table and a set of “dimension” tables.
Conformed fact and dimension elements are elements that conform to the enterprises
centralized metadata database. For example, “store_id” would have a common definition and
attributes across the enterprise and as such would have the same information across dimension
tables. See the appendix for an example of a Dimensional Model

Data Warehouse Dimensional Modeling (Types of Schemas)

There are four types of schemas are available in data warehouse. Out of which the star schema is
mostly used in the data warehouse designs. The second mostly used data warehouse schema is
snow flake schema. We will see about these schemas in detail.

Star Schema:

A star schema is the one in which a central fact table is surrounded by denormalized dimensional
tables. A star schema can be simple or complex. A simple star schema consists of one fact table
where as a complex star schema have more than one fact table.

Snow Flake Schema:

A snow flake schema is an enhancement of star schema by adding additional dimensions. Snow
flake schemas are useful when there are low cardinality attributes in the dimensions.
Galaxy Schema:

Galaxy schema contains many fact tables with some common dimensions (conformed dimensions).
This schema is a combination of many data marts.

Fact Constellation Schema:

The dimensions in this schema are segregated into independent dimensions based on the levels
of hierarchy. For example, if geography has five levels of hierarchy like tertiary, region, country, state
and city; constellation schema would have five dimensions instead of one.

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