Margy Ross and Bob Becker wrote the following articles and Kimball Design Tips. Additional Design Tips written by our Kimball Group colleagues are available on the Kimball Group website; the complete library of Kimball Group articles and Design Tips is available in the latest Kimball Group Reader, Second Edition – Remastered Collection (Kimball/Ross, Wiley 2016).

The short answer is “yes.” The need to focus on business process measurement events, plus grain, dimensions and facts, is as important as ever. When dimensional modeling was popularized several decades ago, we concentrated on schema designs that delivered query performance and ease-of-use. But as I described in Design Tip #160 Think Dimensionally (Beyond Data […]

Time marches on and soon the collective retirement of the Kimball Group will be upon us. In my final Design Tip, I would like to share the perspective for DW/BI success I’ve gained from my 26 years in the data warehouse/business intelligence industry. While data warehousing has been around now for a long while, there […]

For my final Design Tip, I’m returning to a fundamental theme that’s not rocket science, but too often ignored: business-IT collaboration. If you buy into the proposition that the true measure of DW/BI success is business acceptance of the deliverables to improve their decision-making, then buying into the importance of collaboration should be easy. Achieving […]

Countless organizations have created mature dimensional data warehouses that are considered tremendous successes within their organizations. These data warehouse environments support key reporting and analysis requirements for the enterprise. Many are capable of supporting self-serve data access and analysis capabilities for disparate business users. Nonetheless, regardless of the success achieved by these dimensional data warehouses, […]

Over the years, we’ve worked with countless exemplary DW/BI project team members: smart, skilled, dedicated, and motivated, coupled with a healthy dose of mutual trust, respect, and camaraderie with their teammates. Teams with members who possess these characteristics tend to fire on all cylinders, with the resulting whole often greater than the sum of the […]

In most cases, metadata is a neglected area of the DW/BI system; however, an increasing number of DW/BI teams have made positive strides in delivering business metadata to their users. This Design Tip looks beyond the business metadata to suggest several opportunities for leveraging ETL process metadata to improve data warehouse operations. The goal is […]

There are three fundamental types of fact tables in the data warehouse presentation area: transaction fact tables, periodic snapshot fact tables, and accumulating snapshot fact tables. Most DW/BI design teams are very familiar with transaction fact tables. They are the most common fact table type and are often the primary workhorse schema for many organizations. […]

Dimensional designs often need to accommodate multivalued dimensions. Patients can have multiple diagnoses. Students can have multiple majors. Consumers can have multiple hobbies or interests. Commercial customers can have multiple industry classifications. Employees can have multiple skills or certifications. Products can have multiple optional features. Bank accounts can have multiple customers. The multivalued dimension challenge […]

We’re sad to tell you that Warren passed away yesterday. He was diagnosed with an aggressive glioblastoma multiforme brain tumor nearly 14 months ago. Warren and his wife Elizabeth fought the disease with incredible determination and optimism while remaining focused on living life to the fullest. All of us at the Kimball Group will miss […]

Regular readers know we stress the importance of focusing on business requirements when designing dimensional data models to support the data warehouse/business intelligence (DW/BI) environment. As described in Design Tip #157, it is critical to include business partners in the dimensional design process. But including business representatives on the design team obviously increases the size […]