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OBIEEDimensionalModeling

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OBIEEDimensionalModeling
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Dimensional modeling provides set of methods and concepts that are used in DW design.
According to DW consultant, Ralph Kimball, dimensional modeling is a design technique for
databases intended to support enduser queries in a data warehouse. It is oriented around
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understandability and performance. According to him, although transactionoriented ER is

veryusefulforthetransactioncapture,itshouldbeavoidedforenduserdelivery.
Dimensional modeling always uses facts and dimension tables. Facts are numerical values
whichcanbeaggregatedandanalyzedonthefactvalues.Dimensionsdefinehierarchiesand
descriptiononfactvalues.

DimensionTable
DimensiontablestorestheattributesthatdescribeobjectsinaFacttable.ADimensiontable
hasaprimarykeythatuniquelyidentifieseachdimensionrow.Thiskeyisusedtoassociate
theDimensiontabletoaFacttable.
Dimensiontablesarenormallydenormalizedastheyarenotcreatedtoexecutetransactions
andonlyusedtoanalyzedataindetail.

Example
In the following dimension table, the customer dimension normally includes the name of
customers,address,customerid,gender,incomegroup,educationlevels,etc.
CustomerID

Name

Gender

Income

Education

Religion

BrianEdge

FredSmith

SallyJones

FactTables
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Fact table contains numeric values that are known as measurements. A Fact table has two
typesofcolumnsfactsandforeignkeytodimensiontables.
MeasuresinFacttableareofthreetypes
AdditiveMeasuresthatcanbeaddedacrossanydimension.
NonAdditiveMeasuresthatcannotbeaddedacrossanydimension.
SemiAdditiveMeasuresthatcanbeaddedacrosssomedimensions.

Example
TimeID

ProductID

CustomerID

UnitSold

17

21

This fact tables contains foreign keys for time dimension, product dimension, customer
dimensionandmeasurementvalueunitsold.
Supposeacompanysellsproductstocustomers.Everysaleisafactthathappenswithinthe
company,andthefacttableisusedtorecordthesefacts.
Commonfactsarenumberofunitsold,margin,salesrevenue,etc.Thedimensiontablelist
factorslikecustomer,time,product,etc.bywhichwewanttoanalyzethedata.
Now if we consider the above Fact table and Customer dimension then there will also be a
Productandtimedimension.Giventhisfacttableandthesethreedimensiontables,wecan
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askquestionslike:Howmanywatchesweresoldtomalecustomersin2010?

DifferencebetweenDimensionandFactTable
Thefunctionaldifferencebetweendimensiontablesandfacttablesisthatfacttablesholdthe
data we want to analyze and dimension tables hold the information required to allow us to
queryit.

AggregateTable
Aggregate table contains aggregated data which can be calculated by using different
aggregatefunctions.
Anaggregatefunctionisafunctionwherethevaluesofmultiplerowsaregroupedtogether
as input on certain criteria to form a single value of more significant meaning or
measurement.
Commonaggregatefunctionsinclude
Average()
Count()
Maximum()
Median()
Minimum()
Mode()
Sum()

These aggregate tables are used for performance optimization to run complex queries in a
datawarehouse.
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Example
You save tables with aggregated data like yearly (1 row), quarterly (4 rows), monthly (12
rows)andnowyouhavetodocomparisonofdata,likeYearlyonly1rowwillbeprocessed.
Howeverinanunaggregatedtable,alltherowswillbeprocessed.
MIN

Returnsthesmallestvalueinagivencolumn

MAX

Returnsthelargestvalueinagivencolumn

SUM

Returnsthesumofthenumericvaluesinagivencolumn

AVG

Returnstheaveragevalueofagivencolumn

COUNT

Returnsthetotalnumberofvaluesinagivencolumn

COUNT(*)

Returnsthenumberofrowsinatable

Select Avg (salary) from employee where title = developer. This statement will return the
averagesalaryforallemployeeswhosetitleisequalto'Developer'.
Aggregationscanbeappliedatdatabaselevel.Youcancreateaggregatesandsavethemin
aggregatetablesinthedatabaseoryoucanapplyaggregateontheflyatthereportlevel.
NoteIfyousaveaggregatesatthedatabaselevelitsavestimeandprovidesperformance
optimization.

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