Chapter 5
Dimension Design
What's in this chapter?
- Creating a dimension using the Dimension Wizard
- Creating attributes
- Defining attribute relationships
- Creating user hierarchies
- Browsing dimensions
- Understanding properties of dimensions and attributes
- Defining dimension translations
- Creating a snowflake dimension
- Creating a Time dimension
- Creating a parent/child hierarchy
Consider airline travel. Many people with different ultimate destinations embark on a journey together. They board a single airplane at a common location. The airline takes all of them to a common destination. (For the purposes of this metaphor, assume a nonstop flight.) After they arrive at that destination, they branch out to where their own business or personal agendas take them.
The data warehouse design process using Analysis Services multidimensional development tools is similar to that. The wizards that create each major object type take everyone to a common place. When you get there, you can use the corresponding designer to take your objects to their ultimate destination. You saw this approach in the previous chapter when you learned about creating data sources and Data Source Views. Likewise, in this chapter you learn how to create dimensions in a common way using the Dimension Wizard; then you use the Dimension Designer to take your dimensions to their final destination based on your business needs.
Cubes are made up of dimensions and measures, where the measure values are aggregated along each dimension. ...
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