Customer Dimension
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Customer Dimension
I am trying to model a Customer Dimension with Educational and Employment details and I want some advice on how to model this scenario
A Customer can have several levels of Education like schooling, college, university, training (one to many realtionship) and
A Customer could have been employed at several places throughout his/her life (one to many realtionship), If I create a record for each level of Education and Employment I would be storing too many records
what is the best way to model this scenario should I create seperate Dimensions for Education and Employment and reference Education_Key and Employment_Key for that Customer_Key in the Fact table
Please advise
A Customer can have several levels of Education like schooling, college, university, training (one to many realtionship) and
A Customer could have been employed at several places throughout his/her life (one to many realtionship), If I create a record for each level of Education and Employment I would be storing too many records
what is the best way to model this scenario should I create seperate Dimensions for Education and Employment and reference Education_Key and Employment_Key for that Customer_Key in the Fact table
Please advise
kenny- Posts: 1
Join date: 2009-10-30
Re: Customer Dimension
As education and employment are independent of each other, if you go the factless fact table route, you need to create two facts, one with customer/education and the other with customer/employment.
Alternately, treat education as a multivalued dimension with a single fact table of customer/employment/education group. There are not that many unique combinations of education that a grouping would become unwieldy... or you can break education down to education and training/skills as separate dimensional groups. Also, do you need to know lesser education? If someone has a Masters, is it necessary to also record a Bachelors and High School?
Alternately, treat education as a multivalued dimension with a single fact table of customer/employment/education group. There are not that many unique combinations of education that a grouping would become unwieldy... or you can break education down to education and training/skills as separate dimensional groups. Also, do you need to know lesser education? If someone has a Masters, is it necessary to also record a Bachelors and High School?

ngalemmo- Posts: 215
Join date: 2009-05-16
Location: Los Angeles

Re: Customer Dimension
I would agree with ngalemmo, to have a factlessfact to have a single combination of Customer/Education/Employement.
But it is important how much does it value add to store Customers schooling and college details.Subjected to business requirements, if it is not that needed better to avoid such data in ETL process itself.
In such case if you dont prefer to have his schooling and college details, i would suggest to have only two Dimensions namely DimCustomer where one or two columns related to his education fall under his education profile., say Degree ( graduate/post graduate ...), University ( Stanford / Cambridge /...). The DimCustomerEmployement however remains the same as the current employement status of the customer is always is of high importance and value.
But it is important how much does it value add to store Customers schooling and college details.Subjected to business requirements, if it is not that needed better to avoid such data in ETL process itself.
In such case if you dont prefer to have his schooling and college details, i would suggest to have only two Dimensions namely DimCustomer where one or two columns related to his education fall under his education profile., say Degree ( graduate/post graduate ...), University ( Stanford / Cambridge /...). The DimCustomerEmployement however remains the same as the current employement status of the customer is always is of high importance and value.
Prasanna- Posts: 6
Join date: 2009-10-21
Re: Customer Dimension
I'm trying to understand you situation a little better. What would the fields be in your DimCustomerEmployement table?
jimbo1580- Posts: 11
Join date: 2009-04-30
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