Star Schema The Complete Reference

CHAPTER 3Stars and Cubes

Now that you have the basic concepts of measurement under your belt and have reviewed the various ways dimensional design can be employed, you are ready to learn the fundamentals of dimensional design. This chapter covers basics in four categories: dimension table features, fact table features, slowly changing dimensions, and cubes.

As you learned in Chapter 1, “Analytic Databases and Dimensional Design,” surrogate keys are employed to identify rows in dimension tables. This chapter explores the reasons for this practice. You have also learned that, as the providers of measurement context, dimension tables play an important role in the star schema. This chapter provides techniques to enrich the assortment of dimensions ...