Where to Put Region or Continent Value
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Where to Put Region or Continent Value
In DimGeography, I have the Country name but I need to also know:
A.) Which continent this country belongs to
B.) Whether it is considered domestic or international
So both A and B are calculated fields and are not values you get straight from the source DB, but they are based on the value of the Country field and a certain formula (e.g., if Country=US then Domestic, etc.)
Is the best approach to this to just add two columns in DimGeography and just populate those values during ETL?
Or is there a better approach?
Thank you!
A.) Which continent this country belongs to
B.) Whether it is considered domestic or international
So both A and B are calculated fields and are not values you get straight from the source DB, but they are based on the value of the Country field and a certain formula (e.g., if Country=US then Domestic, etc.)
Is the best approach to this to just add two columns in DimGeography and just populate those values during ETL?
Or is there a better approach?
Thank you!
ohmycamote- Posts : 14
Join date : 2011-07-05
Re: Where to Put Region or Continent Value
I can see A.) continent is obviously a grouping attribute at the higher level of the hierarchy in DimGeography. However B.) Domestic/International seems to have only one record with domestic and all other records with international. I don’t feel comfortable adding a flag to the dimension if it is so predictable from users’ perspective and not portable when used in different countries. Possibly just leave it to the front end to handle it for more flexibility without compromising on ease of use.
hang- Posts : 528
Join date : 2010-05-07
Location : Brisbane, Australia
Re: Where to Put Region or Continent Value
I have both of those fields in my geography dimension, populated during ETL exactly as you described. My users want to be able to "slice-and-dice" by Domestic vs. International. Having that field gives them that ability. As hang mentioned, it is not "portable"--it provides a single view of the business from the perspective of corporate headquarters. This works fine for a company which considers themselves based in a single country, but wouldn't work so well for a truely multinational enterprise.
VHF- Posts : 236
Join date : 2009-04-28
Location : Wisconsin, US
Re: Where to Put Region or Continent Value
Do you think it is going to work for a multinational company to have one domestic/international flag field for each regional office?
thomaszhwang- Posts : 32
Join date : 2011-08-11
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