Friday, March 7, 2014

Dimensional Model

What is dimensional modelling?
Dimensional model consists of dimension and fact tables. Fact tables store different transactional measurements and the foreign keys from dimension tables that qualifies the data. The goal of Dimensional model is not to achieve high degree of normalization but to facilitate easy and faster data retrieval.

Ralph Kimball is one of the strongest proponents of this very popular data modelling technique which is often used in many enterprise level data warehouses

Benefits of Dimensional Modelling
1.     Faster Data Retrieval
2.     Better Understand-ability
3.     Extensibility

In dimensional model, everything is divided in 2 distinct categories - dimension or measures. Anything we try to model, must fit in one of these two categories.


A type of data modelling suited for data warehousing. In a dimensional model, there are two types of tables: dimensional tables and fact tables.

Dimensional table records information on each dimension and Fact table records all the "Fact" or "Measures".

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