Snowflake schemas

Two "dimensional modeling” techniques are generally used for modeling the data structures within a data warehouse context.

These are the "star schema” and "snowflake schema” techniques. Both find their roots within the Kimball dimensional modeling techniques.

Properties of the snowflake schemas :

  • Hierarchical structure can be visualized
  • some tools don’t support snowflakes
  • destroys "browsing” speed and flexibility
  • more tables
  • less storage
  • possibly slower generally to be avoided in the context of end-users queries.