Modeling OLAP Source Schemas—Stars
Learning about OLAP modeling always starts with a thorough review of the “classic” OLAP source model: the star schema. The next section reviews the concepts behind star schema modeling in detail.
Before we start however, let's take a minute to discuss an even more fundamental idea for your BI project. Is a star schema strictly required? The technical answer to this question is “no” because Microsoft purposely does not require you to base OLAP cubes off of only data that is in a star schema format. In other words, you can create cubes based off of OLTP (or normalized relational data).
However, and this is a big however, it is critical for you to understand star schema modeling and to attempt to provide SSAS with ...
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