Kimball Group: Data Warehouse Training: Design Tips

Design Tips The Kimball Group delivers practical techniques via our monthly email Design Tips, along with reminders about upcoming worldwide classes and events. Your monthly Design Tip subscription is unique:
•	No membership fee
•	Vendor independent
•	Reliable, real-world guidance, not theory
•	Written by Kimball Group members, the only practitioners certified by Ralph

Design Tips 2008—Subscribe now to receive 2008 Design Tips!

Design Tip #105		Snowflakes, Outriggers, and Bridges
Design Tip #104		Upgrading your BI Architecture
Design Tip #103		Staffing the Dimensional Modeling Team
Design Tip #102		Server Configuration Considerations
Design Tip #101		Slowly Changing Vocabulary
Design Tip #100		Keep Your Keys Simple
Design Tip #99		Staging Areas and ETL Tools
Design Tip #98		Focus on Data Stewardship

Design Tips 2007 (PDF format—2007 design tips zipped)
Design Tip #97		Modeling Data as Both a Fact and Dimension Attribute
Design Tip #96		Think Like A Software Development Manager
Design Tip #95		Patterns to Avoid when Modeling Header/Line Item Transactions
Design Tip #94		Building Custom Tools for the DW/BI System
Design Tip #93		Transactions Create Time Spans
Design Tip #92		Dimension Manager and Fact Provider
Design Tip #91		Marketing the DW/BI System
Design Tip #90		Slowly Changing Entities
Design Tip #89		The Real Time Triage
Design Tip #88		Dashboards Done Right
Design Tip #87		Combining SCD Techniques Having It Both Ways

Design Tips 2006 (PDF format—2006 design tips zipped)
Design Tip #86		Reference Dimensions for Infrequently-Accessed Degenerates
Design Tip #85		Smart Date Keys to Partition Fact Tables
Design Tip #84		Readers’ Suggestions on Fact Table Surrogate Keys
Design Tip #83		Resist Abstract Generic Dimensions
Design Tip #82		Pivoting the Fact Table with a Fact Dimension
Design Tip #81		Fact Table Surrogate Keys
Design Tip #80		Dimension Row Change Reason Attributes
Design Tip #79		Dangerously Large Dimension Tables
Design Tip #78		Late Arriving Dimension Rows
Design Tip #77		Warning: Summary Data may be Hazardous
Design Tip #76		Advantages of a 64-bit Server
Design Tip #75		Creating the Metadata Strategy

Design Tips 2005 (PDF format—2005 design tips zipped)
Design Tip #74		Compliance-Enabled Data Warehouses
Design Tip #73		Relating to Agile Methodologies
Design Tip #72		Business Process Decoder Ring
Design Tip #71		Naming Conventions
Design Tip #70		Architecting Data for MS SQL Server 2005
Design Tip #69		Identifying Business Processes
Design Tip #68		Simple Drill-Across in SQL
Design Tip #67		Maintaining Back Pointers to Operational Sources
Design Tip #66		Implementation Analysis Paralysis
Design Tip #65		Document the ETL System
Design Tip #64		Avoid Isolating the DW and BI Teams
Design Tip #63		Building a Change Data Capture System


Design Tips 2004 (PDF format—2004 design tips zipped)
Design Tip #62		Alternate Hierarchies
Design Tip #61		Handling all the Dates
Design Tip #60		Big Shifts in Business Intelligence
Design Tip #59		Surprising Value of Data Profiling
Design Tip #58		BI Portal
Design Tip #57		Early Arriving Facts
Design Tip #56		Dimensional Modeling for Microsoft Analysis Services
Design Tip #55		Exploring Text Facts
Design Tip #54		Delivering Historical and Current Perspectives
Design Tip #53		Dimension Embellishments
Design Tip #52		Improving Operating Procedures
Design Tip #51		Latest Thinking on Time Dimension Tables

Design Tips 2003 (PDF format—2003 design tips zipped)
Design Tip #50		Factless Fact Tables
Design Tip #49		Off the Bench about the Bottoms Up Misnomer
Design Tip #48		De-clutter with Junk Dimensions
Design Tip #47		Business Initiatives versus Business Processes
Design Tip #46		Another Look at Degenerate Dimensions
Design Tip #45		Techniques for Modeling Intellectual Capital
Design Tip #44		Reliance on the BI Tool’s Metadata
Design Tip #43		Dealing With Nulls in a Dimensional Model
Design Tip #42		Combining Periodic and Accumulating Snapshots

Design Tips 2002 (PDF format—2002 design tips zipped)
Design Tip #41		Drill Down into a Detailed Bus Matrix
Design Tip #40		Structure of an Analytic Application
Design Tip #39		Bus Architecture Foundation for Analytic Applications
Design Tip #38		Analytic Application—What's That?
Design Tip #37		Modeling a Pipeline with Accumulating Snapshots
Design Tip #36		To Be or Not To Be Centralized
Design Tip #35		Modeling Time Spans
Design Tip #34		You Don't Need an EDW
Design Tip #33		Using CRM Measures as Behavior Tags
Design Tip #32		Doing the Work at Extract Time

Design Tips 2001 (PDF format—2001 design tips zipped)
Design Tip #31		Designing a Real Time Partition
Design Tip #30		Put your Fact Tables on a Diet
Design Tip #29		Graceful Modifications to Existing Fact and Dimension Tables
Design Tip #28		Avoiding Catastrophic Failure of the Data Warehouse
Design Tip #27		Being Off-line as Little as Possible
Design Tip #26		Audit Dimensions to Track Lineage and Confidence
Design Tip #25		Dimensional Models for Parent-Child Applications
Design Tip #24		Multinational Dimensional Data Warehouse Considerations
Design Tip #23		Rolling Prediction of the Future
Design Tip #22		Variable Depth Customer Dimensions
Design Tip #21		Declaring the Grain
Design Tip #20		Sparse Facts and Facts with Short Lifetimes
Design Tip #19		Replicating Dimensions Correctly
Design Tip #18		Taking the Publishing Metaphor Seriously
Design Tip #17		Populating Hierarchy Helper Tables

Design Tips 2000 (PDF format—2000 design tips zipped)
Design Tip #16		Hot Swappable Dimensions
Design Tip #15		Combining SCD Techniques
Design Tip #14		Arbitrary Balance Reporting with Transaction Facts
Design Tip #13		When Fact Tables can be used as Dimensions
Design Tip #12		Accurate Counting with a Dimensional Supplement
Design Tip #11		Accurate Counts within a Dimension
Design Tip #10		Is your Data Correct
Design Tip #9		Processing Slowly Changing Dimensions during Initial Load
Design Tip #8		Perfectly Partioning History with Type 2 SCD
Design Tip #7		Getting your Data Warehouse back on Track
Design Tip #6		Showing the Correlation between Dimensions
Design Tip #5		Surrogate Keys for the Time Dimension
Design Tip #4		Fast Changing Complex Customer Dimensions
Design Tip #3		Focus on Business Process, not Business Departments
Design Tip #2		Multiple Time Stamps
Design Tip #1		Guidelines for an Expressive Clickstream Data Mart