DSS Example One

A Silicon Valley computer company implemented a traditional data warehouse using a star schema approach. A star schema provides multiple paths (dimensions) to the central data facts. As you can see in Figure 3.4, a decision support user can get to the Sales Units, Sales Price, and Sales Returns through Geographic, Time, and Product dimensions. This allows the user to ask questions such as “What were net sales for North America for a particular month for a specific computer product?” SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) packages populate this data warehouse and conformed dimensions on a daily basis with deltas (new data changes only). The data warehouse is unavailable for about one hour each night as daily updates are rolled ...

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