Business Intelligence

2.3. Logical Model: Star Schema

The way of modeling data in the data warehouse corresponds to the need for reporting of business data. When one makes a report, business measures are analyzed, such as sales quantity, in various contexts (i.e., dimensions), such as products, customers, and time. As Edgar F. Codd, a British computer scientist who invented the relational model for database management, observed, “in principle, there are a great number of different dimensions, which can be used to analyze a certain set of data. This complex perspective that is a multi-faceted, notional picture seems to be the way in which most business people perceive their enterprise.”⁵

Table 2.1 shows a sales report of personal computers (PCs) by a computer hardware ...