Conformed Dimensions
Now that you understand the importance of the enterprise bus architecture, let’s further explore the standardized conformed dimensions that serve as the cornerstone of the bus because they’re shared across business process fact tables. Conformed dimensions go by many other aliases: common dimensions, master dimensions, reference dimensions, and shared dimensions. Conformed dimensions should be built once in the ETL system and then replicated either logically or physically throughout the enterprise DW/BI environment. When built, it’s extremely important that the DW/BI development teams take the pledge to use these dimensions. It’s a policy decision that is critical to making the enterprise DW/BI system function; their usage should be mandated by the organization’s CIO.
Drilling Across Fact Tables
In addition to consistency and reusability, conformed dimensions enable you to combine performance measurements from different business...