Overview
Main description
The definitive guide to dimensional design for your data warehouse
Learn the best practices of dimensional design. Star Schema: The Complete Reference offers in-depth coverage of design principles and their underlying rationales. Organized around design concepts and illustrated with detailed examples, this is a step-by-step guidebook for beginners and a comprehensive resource for experts.
This all-inclusive volume begins with dimensional design fundamentals and shows how they fit into diverse data warehouse architectures, including those of W.H. Inmon and Ralph Kimball. The book progresses through a series of advanced techniques that help you address real-world complexity, maximize performance, and adapt to the requirements of BI and ETL software products. You are furnished with design tasks and deliverables that can be incorporated into any project, regardless of architecture or methodology.
- Master the fundamentals of star schema design and slow change processing
- Identify situations that call for multiple stars or cubes
- Ensure compatibility across subject areas as your data warehouse grows
- Accommodate repeating attributes, recursive hierarchies, and poor data quality
- Support conflicting requirements for historic data
- Handle variation within a business process and correlation of disparate activities
- Boost performance using derived schemas and aggregates
- Learn when it's appropriate to adjust designs for BI and ETL tools
Table of contents
Part I: Fundamentals; Chapter 1: Analytic Databases and Dimensional Design; Chapter 2: Data Warehouse Architectures; Chapter 3: Stars and Cubes; Part II: Multiple Stars; Chapter 4: A Fact Table for Each Process; Chapter 5: Conformed Dimensions; Part III: Dimension Design; Chapter 6: More on Dimension Tables; Chapter 7: Hierarchies and Snowflakes; Chapter 8: More Slow Change Techniques; Chapter 9: Multi-Value Dimensions and Bridges; Chapter 10: Recursive Hierarchies and Bridges;Part IV: Fact Table Design; Chapter 11: Transactions, Snapshots and Accumulating Snapshots; Chapter 12: Factless Fact Tables; Chapter 13: Type-Specific Stars; Part V: Performance; Chapter 14: Derived Schemas; Chapter 15: Aggregates; Part VI: Tools and Documentation; Chapter 16: Design and Business Intelligence; Chapter 17: Design and ETL; Chapter 18: How to Design and Document a Dimensional Model; Index
Author comments
Christopher Adamson is the founder of Oakton Software LLC and a faculty member at The Data Warehousing Institute. He works with customers in all industries to establish data warehousing strategies, define and prioritize projects, and design solutions. Chris has taught dimensional design to thousands of students worldwide, and has written numerous books and articles.
