Most ETL tools provide some functionality for handling slowly changing dimensions. Every so often, when the tool isn’t performing as needed, the ETL developer will use the database to identify new and changed rows, and apply the appropriate inserts and updates. I’ve shown examples of this code in the Data Warehouse Lifecycle in Depth class using standard INSERT […]

Fact tables are the foundation of the data warehouse. They contain the fundamental measurements of the enterprise, and they are the ultimate target of most data warehouse queries. There is no point in hoisting fact tables up the flagpole unless they have been chosen to reflect urgent business priorities, have been carefully quality assured and […]