Book Image

The Data Warehouse Toolkit - Third Edition

By : Ralph Kimball, Margy Ross
5 (2)
Book Image

The Data Warehouse Toolkit - Third Edition

5 (2)
By: Ralph Kimball, Margy Ross

Overview of this book

The volume of data continues to grow as warehouses are populated with increasingly atomic data and updated with greater frequency. Dimensional modeling has become the most widely accepted approach for presenting information in data warehouse and business intelligence (DW/BI) systems. The goal of this book is to provide a one-stop shop for dimensional modeling techniques. The book is authored by Ralph Kimball and Margy Ross, known worldwide as educators, consultants, and influential thought leaders in data warehousing and business intelligence. The book begins with a primer on data warehousing, business intelligence, and dimensional modeling, and you’ll explore more than 75-dimensional modeling techniques and patterns. Then you’ll understand dimension tables in-depth to get a good grip on retailing and moved towards the topics of inventory. Moving ahead, you’ll learn how to use this book for procurement, order management, accounting, customer relationship management, and many more business sectors. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to gather all the essential knowledge, practices, and patterns for designing dimensional models.
Table of Contents (31 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Cover
2
Title Page
3
Copyright
4
About the Authors
5
Credits
6
Acknowledgements
29
Index
30
Advertisement
31
End User License Agreement

13
Education

We step into the world of an educational institution in this chapter, looking first at the applicant pipeline as an accumulating snapshot. When accumulating snapshot fact tables were introduced in Chapter 4: Inventory, a product movement pipeline illustrated the concept; order fulfillment workflows were captured in an accumulating snapshot in Chapter 6: Order Management. In this chapter, rather than watching products or orders move through various states, an accumulating snapshot is used to monitor prospective student applicants as they progress through admissions milestones.

The other primary concept discussed in this chapter is the factless fact table. We’ll explore several case study illustrations drawn from higher education to further elaborate on these special fact tables and discuss the analysis of events that didn’t occur.

Chapter 13 discusses the following concepts:

  • Example bus matrix snippet for a university or college
  • Applicant tracking and research...