Training Course : Advanced Dimensional Modeling

11
May 2012
Event
11 May, 2012
02:00 to 02:01
Hasselt, Belgium

Because of a lack of offerings in the Belgian market, element61 has decided to develop a training on Dimensional Modeling, together with Bi-Community. Details on the training objectives and target audience can be found below. For more information contact Stijn Vermeulen at stijn.vermeulen@element61.be.

Course description

Dimensional models constitute the beating heart of any sound Business Intelligence & Data Warehousing system. In other words the quality and the final acceptance of our Business Intelligence solution is uttermost dependent on the quality of the dimensional models.

In essence dimensional modeling boils down to logically modeling the business requirements. It is however quite different from normalized modeling as we are used to in an ERP/OLTP-like situation.

This 2-day course on dimensional modeling is based on Ralph Kimball’s book, the Data Warehouse Toolkit. The course will take off by explaining the fundamentals in terms of dimensions & facts and the corresponding dimensional process. It will offer a view on tools & templates which can be used to accelerate & document. But it will also delve deeper into amongst others history tracking, the various existing fact-types, multi-valued dimensions, heterogeneous dimensions and facts. Throughout the course special situations are discussed and a number of exercises, based on real-world cases, are given. In short, a full understanding of dimensional modeling techniques, which are required to design a successful relational dimensional model based on the Kimball star schema techniques, is offered.

To avoid confusion, this course will not deal with matters such as architecture or Data Vault techniques.

Duration

One day course. This course is the 2nd day of a 2 day course on Dimensional modeling, in combination with "Dimensional Modeling for Beginners”, but can be followed separately if basics of dimensional modeling are mastered.

Learning outcomes

The dimensional training will handle all of the underneath topics.

  • Recap of dimensional modeling fundamentals
  • De-generate dimensions, aggregated facts as attributes, dimension outriggers, role-playing dimensions, conformed dimensions, junk dimensions, multiple currencies, behavior study groups, variable-depth hierarchies, multi-valued-dimensions, heterogeneous dimensions, fact dimensions
  • Transactional facts, periodic snapshots, accumulating snapshots, factless facts, aggregates, consolidated facts, normalized facts, heterogeneous dimensions
  • Slowly changing dimensions (type 1, type 2, type 3, type 6)
  • Star schema versus snowflake schema
  • Screening technique

Target audience

This course is intended towards professionals with basic to intermediate knowledge of modeling in the context of Data Warehousing & Business Intelligence. This includes data architects, data modelers, business analysts, business intelligence designers, project managers, DW/BI developers.

Prerequisites

Suggested prerequisites: General Data Warehousing & Business Intelligence knowledge + first experiences with dimensional modeling or if no previous experience with dimensional modeling is present, the course is ideally followed after the "Dimensional Modeling for Beginners” course.

Format

The training consists mainly of plenary lecturing with a limited set of additional exercises & challenges.

Trainer

Werner Engelen has been active in Data Warehousing & Business Intelligence since 1998. He has worked as DW & BI consultant for respected firms like amongst others Oracle, PwC Consulting & IBM Global Business Services. Since 2008, he is working as a Senior Performance Management Architect for element61 in the areas of project management & methodologies, business analysis, dimensional modeling, ETL design and data quality. In his spare time, Werner is an acclaimed photographer.