Book Image

Data Modeling with Snowflake

By : Serge Gershkovich
5 (2)
Book Image

Data Modeling with Snowflake

5 (2)
By: Serge Gershkovich

Overview of this book

The Snowflake Data Cloud is one of the fastest-growing platforms for data warehousing and application workloads. Snowflake's scalable, cloud-native architecture and expansive set of features and objects enables you to deliver data solutions quicker than ever before. Yet, we must ensure that these solutions are developed using recommended design patterns and accompanied by documentation that’s easily accessible to everyone in the organization. This book will help you get familiar with simple and practical data modeling frameworks that accelerate agile design and evolve with the project from concept to code. These universal principles have helped guide database design for decades, and this book pairs them with unique Snowflake-native objects and examples like never before – giving you a two-for-one crash course in theory as well as direct application. By the end of this Snowflake book, you’ll have learned how to leverage Snowflake’s innovative features, such as time travel, zero-copy cloning, and change-data-capture, to create cost-effective, efficient designs through time-tested modeling principles that are easily digestible when coupled with real-world examples.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
1
Part 1: Core Concepts in Data Modeling and Snowflake Architecture
8
Part 2: Applied Modeling from Idea to Deployment
14
Part 3: Solving Real-World Problems with Transformational Modeling

Dimensions overview

A dimension unifies (or conforms) similar attributes from one or various source systems into a single table under a common unique identifier known as a business key. A single surrogate key can also be used in place of multi-column business or primary keys. The unique key of a dimension table plays a critical role in identifying dimension records and allows the database team to track and maintain changes over time. A dimension table can be structured in predetermined ways to allow for different types of change tracking depending on the business requirement.

SCD types

Attributes within a dimension have differing requirements for durability and change tracking. Some attributes are updated directly, while others require historical snapshots, yet others cannot change at all. This section will cover the types of SCDs, or update profiles, that a given attribute in a dimension can have.

It’s important to note that the dimension type may not necessarily apply...