Tuesday, January 25, 2011

DS - Definitions PART-V

What are Aggregate tables?
Aggregate table contains the summary of existing warehouse data which is grouped to certain levels of dimensions.Retrieving the required data from the actual table, which have millions of records will take more time and also affects the server performance.To avoid this we can aggregate the table to certain required level and can use it.This tables reduces the load in the database server and increases the performance of the query and can retrieve the result very fastly.

What is Dimensional Modelling? Why is it important ?
Dimensional Modelling is a design concept used by many data warehouse desginers to build thier datawarehouse. In this design model all the data is stored in two types of tables - Facts table and Dimension table. Fact table contains the facts/measurements of the business and the dimension table contains the context of measuremnets ie, the dimensions on which the facts are calculated.

Why is Data Modeling Important?
Data modeling is probably the most labor intensive and time consuming part of the development process. Why bother especially if you are pressed for time? A common response by practitioners who write on the subject is that you should no more build a database without a model than you should build a house without blueprints.

The goal of the data model is to make sure that the all data objects required by the database are completely and accurately represented. Because the data model uses easily understood notations and natural language , it can be reviewed and verified as correct by the end-users.

The data model is also detailed enough to be used by the database developers to use as a "blueprint" for building the physical database. The information contained in the data model will be used to define the relational tables, primary and foreign keys, stored procedures, and triggers. A poorly designed database will require more time in the long-term. Without careful planning you may create a database that omits data required to create critical reports, produces results that are incorrect or inconsistent, and is unable to accommodate changes in the user's requirements.

What is data mining?
Data mining is a process of extracting hidden trends within a datawarehouse. For example an insurance dataware house can be used to mine data for the most high risk people to insure in a certain geographial area.

What is ODS?
1. ODS means Operational Data Store.
2. A collection of operation or bases data that is extracted from operation databases and standardized, cleansed, consolidated, transformed, and loaded into an enterprise data architecture. An ODS is used to support data mining of operational data, or as the store for base data that is summarized for a data warehouse. The ODS may also be used to audit the data warehouse to assure summarized and derived data is calculated properly. The ODS may further become the enterprise shared operational database, allowing operational systems that are being reengineered to use the ODS as there operation databases.

What is a dimension table?

A dimensional table is a collection of hierarchies and categories along which the user can drill down and drill up. it contains only the textual attributes.

What is a lookup table?
A lookUp table is the one which is used when updating a warehouse. When the lookup is placed on the target table (fact table / warehouse) based upon the primary key of the target, it just updates the table by allowing only new records or updated records based on the lookup condition.


Why should you put your data warehouse on a different system than your OLTP system?
Answer1: A OLTP system is basically " data oriented " (ER model) and not " Subject oriented "(Dimensional Model) .That is why we design a separate system that will have a subject oriented OLAP system...  Moreover if a complex querry is fired on a OLTP system will cause a heavy overhead on the OLTP server that will affect the daytoday business directly.

Answer2: The loading of a warehouse will likely consume a lot of machine resources. Additionally, users may create querries or reports that are very resource intensive because of the potentially large amount of data available. Such loads and resource needs will conflict with the needs of the OLTP systems for resources and will negatively impact those production systems.

What is ETL?

ETL stands for extraction, transformation and loading.

ETL provide developers with an interface for designing source-to-target mappings, ransformation and job control parameter.
 Extraction : Take data from an external source and move it to the warehouse pre-processor database.
Transformation : Transform data task allows point-to-point generating, modifying and transforming data.
Loading : Load data task adds records to a database table in a warehouse.

What does level of Granularity of a fact table signify?
Granularity The first step in designing a fact table is to determine the granularity of the fact table. By granularity, we mean the lowest level of information that will be stored in the fact table. This constitutes two steps:

Determine which dimensions will be included.
Determine where along the hierarchy of each dimension the information will be kept.
The determining factors usually goes back to the requirements.

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