Kimball's four step process

Data Warehousing Concepts

Aaren Stubberfield

Data Scientist

Step 1 - Select the organizational process

  • Ask questions about a process
  • Kimball bottom-up approach starts with a business process

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Examples of organizational processes:

  • Invoice and billing
  • Product quality monitoring
  • Marketing
Data Warehousing Concepts

Step 2 - Declare the grain

  • Grain = level to store fact table
  • A level of data that cannot be split further

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Examples of business processes:

  • Music service -> Song grain
  • Shipping service -> Line item grain
Data Warehousing Concepts

Step 3 - Identify the dimensions

  • Choose dimensions that apply to each row
  • How to describe the data?
  • Business users and analysts = valuable feedback

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Examples of common dimensions:

  • Time: year, quarter, and month
  • Location: address, state, and country
  • Users: names and email address
1 Photo by Alison Pang on Unsplash
Data Warehousing Concepts

Step 4 - Identify the facts

  • Numerical facts for each fact table row
  • What are we answering?
  • Metrics should be true at selected grain

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Examples of facts:

  • Music service: total number of plays, sales revenue of a song
  • Ride-sharing: travel distance, time needed
1 Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán
Data Warehousing Concepts

Summary

Steps:

  1. Select the organizational process.
  2. Declare the grain.
  3. Identify the dimensions.
  4. Identify the facts.
Data Warehousing Concepts

Let's practice!

Data Warehousing Concepts

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