Kimball Group: Data Warehouse Training: Articles

Articles
Ralph Kimball and other Kimball Group members have written over 120 columns for Intelligent Enterprise Magazine and its predecessor, DBMS Magazine.

Readers Choice 2003

Readers Choice 2002

readers choice award 2001

readers choice award 2000

Articles 2007
December 9		Handling Arbitrary Restatements of History How do you cope with an executive's request to "bring back a time series of activity for all subscribers who were in platinum status as of X date," or "show me a time series of orders by sales region according to the sales organization as of Y"? Here's how data warehouse pros can cope with the common requirement to look back in time.

October 31		Patterns to Avoid when Modeling Header/Line Item Transactions These 34 subsystems cover the crucial extract, transform and load architecture components required in almost every dimensional data warehouse environment. Understanding the breadth of requirements is the first step to putting an effective architecture in place.

August 27		Educate Management to Sustain Data Warehouse/BI Success Data warehousing and business intelligence success cannot be taken for granted. You must create an ongoing education and communication program to maintain your success and extend it across the organization.







Design Tip #87		Combining SCD Techniques Having It Both Ways

Design Tips 2006 (PDF format)
Design Tip #86		Reference Dimensions for Infrequently-Accessed Degenerates
Design Tip #85		Smart Date Keys to Partition Fact Tables
Design Tip #84		Readers’ Suggestions on Fact Table Surrogate Keys
Design Tip #83		Resist Abstract Generic Dimensions
Design Tip #82		Pivoting the Fact Table with a Fact Dimension
Design Tip #81		Fact Table Surrogate Keys
Design Tip #80		Dimension Row Change Reason Attributes
Design Tip #79		Dangerously Large Dimension Tables
Design Tip #78		Late Arriving Dimension Rows
Design Tip #77		Warning: Summary Data may be Hazardous
Design Tip #76		Advantages of a 64-bit Server
Design Tip #75		Creating the Metadata Strategy

Design Tips 2005 (PDF format)
Design Tip #74		Compliance-Enabled Data Warehouses
Design Tip #73		Relating to Agile Methodologies
Design Tip #72		Business Process Decoder Ring
Design Tip #71		Naming Conventions
Design Tip #70		Architecting Data for MS SQL Server 2005
Design Tip #69		Identifying Business Processes
Design Tip #68		Simple Drill-Across in SQL
Design Tip #67		Maintaining Back Pointers to Operational Sources
Design Tip #66		Implementation Analysis Paralysis
Design Tip #65		Document the ETL System
Design Tip #64		Avoid Isolating the DW and BI Teams
Design Tip #63		Building a Change Data Capture System


Design Tips 2004 (PDF format)
Design Tip #62		Alternate Hierarchies
Design Tip #61		Handling all the Dates
Design Tip #60		Big Shifts in Business Intelligence
Design Tip #59		Surprising Value of Data Profiling
Design Tip #58		BI Portal
Design Tip #57		Early Arriving Facts
Design Tip #56		Dimensional Modeling for Microsoft Analysis Services
Design Tip #55		Exploring Text Facts
Design Tip #54		Delivering Historical and Current Perspectives
Design Tip #53		Dimension Embellishments
Design Tip #52		Improving Operating Procedures
Design Tip #51		Latest Thinking on Time Dimension Tables

Design Tips 2003 (PDF format)
Design Tip #50		Factless Fact Tables
Design Tip #49		Off the Bench about the Bottoms Up Misnomer
Design Tip #48		De-clutter with Junk Dimensions
Design Tip #47		Business Initiatives versus Business Processes
Design Tip #46		Another Look at Degenerate Dimensions
Design Tip #45		Techniques for Modeling Intellectual Capital
Design Tip #44		Reliance on the BI Tool’s Metadata
Design Tip #43		Dealing With Nulls in a Dimensional Model
Design Tip #42		Combining Periodic and Accumulating Snapshots

Design Tips 2002 (PDF format)
Design Tip #41		Drill Down into a Detailed Bus Matrix
Design Tip #40		Structure of an Analytic Application
Design Tip #39		Bus Architecture Foundation for Analytic Applications
Design Tip #38		Analytic Application—What's That?
Design Tip #37		Modeling a Pipeline with Accumulating Snapshots
Design Tip #36		To Be or Not To Be Centralized
Design Tip #35		Modeling Time Spans
Design Tip #34		You Don't Need an EDW
Design Tip #33		Using CRM Measures as Behavior Tags
Design Tip #32		Doing the Work at Extract Time

Design Tips 2001 (PDF format)
Design Tip #31		Designing a Real Time Partition
Design Tip #30		Put your Fact Tables on a Diet
Design Tip #29		Graceful Modifications to Existing Fact and Dimension Tables
Design Tip #28		Avoiding Catastrophic Failure of the Data Warehouse
Design Tip #27		Being Off-line as Little as Possible
Design Tip #26		Audit Dimensions to Track Lineage and Confidence
Design Tip #25		Dimensional Models for Parent-Child Applications
Design Tip #24		Multinational Dimensional Data Warehouse Considerations
Design Tip #23		Rolling Prediction of the Future
Design Tip #22		Variable Depth Customer Dimensions
Design Tip #21		Declaring the Grain
Design Tip #20		Sparse Facts and Facts with Short Lifetimes
Design Tip #19		Replicating Dimensions Correctly
Design Tip #18		Taking the Publishing Metaphor Seriously
Design Tip #17		Populating Hierarchy Helper Tables

Design Tips 2000 (PDF format)
Design Tip #16		Hot Swappable Dimensions
Design Tip #15		Combining SCD Techniques
Design Tip #14		Arbitrary Balance Reporting with Transaction Facts
Design Tip #13		When Fact Tables can be used as Dimensions
Design Tip #12		Accurate Counting with a Dimensional Supplement
Design Tip #11		Accurate Counts within a Dimension
Design Tip #10		Is your Data Correct
Design Tip #9		Processing Slowly Changing Dimensions during Initial Load
Design Tip #8		Perfectly Partioning History with Type 2 SCD
Design Tip #7		Getting your Data Warehouse back on Track
Design Tip #6		Showing the Correlation between Dimensions
Design Tip #5		Surrogate Keys for the Time Dimension
Design Tip #4		Fast Changing Complex Customer Dimensions
Design Tip #3		Focus on Business Process, not Business Departments
Design Tip #2		Multiple Time Stamps
Design Tip #1		Guidelines for an Expressive Clickstream Data Mart

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