Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Unleashed, Second Edition

Working with a Relational Database

The examples you have worked to this point have been from a dimensional database that uses a star or snowflake schema.

NOTE Designing dimensional databases is an art form and requires not only sound dimensional modeling knowledge, but also knowledge of the business processes with which you are dealing. Data warehousing has several design approaches. Regardless of which approach you take, having a good understanding of the approach's design techniques is critical to the success of a data warehouse project. Although Microsoft provides a powerful set of tools to implement data marts, astute execution of design methods is critical to getting the correct data—the truly business-significant business data—to the end ...