Standard or base dimensional models for industries

Is there a place that stores or publishes standard or basic dimensional models for various industries?

it occurred to me that there should be industry standard DW models out there. Different companies in the same industry have the same data. In fact, in many cases, the source systems are purchased - not made. And even if they were, don't the same companies within an industry have the same data?

Should all health insurance companies have the same fact tables and dimension tables? Heck, there should be a lot of overlap in the insurance industry as a whole. There are members, providers, clients, claims, and brokers.

Another example is the banking industry. Credit accounts, deposit accounts, transactions, credit applications, branches and ATMs.

And Retail is retail.

Granted, there are minor differences in the structure of the dimension tables, but a DW for an particular industry should be rather consistent.

There are lots of models out there. IBM, SAP, Teradata, all have industry standard models available. Retail has the ARTS industry model. None of them are cheap which is why you don't run across them very often.

We should create a new tab for DDL or physical models.  Make it a place where people can get examples for common dimensions and facts.  Heck, throw up a model and let people critique it - constructively of course - it will improve everyone's designs.

Hi Jeff,

That is a good idea; we should help something like a template model which can then be customized by people depending upon their requirement/environment.

thanks

Himanshu

I'll admit to playing devil's advocate a bit here but...

1. Isn't any model that could be applicable to a significant number of projects going to be so generic that it's actually of little use to any specific project?
2. Isn't such a generic model going to be trivial for an experienced dimensional modeler to create?
3. If an inexperienced dimensional modeler can't create a basic model then isn't creating one from scratch a vital learning experience for them? Also, would you really want someone who is incapable of creating the generic model taking it and enhancing it for their specific requirements? I would suggest that their chances of them doing this successfully are slight
4. If the proposal is to create DDL then this is DB-specific. Would there really be the appetite to create Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, etc. versions of each model - and if we didn't then how useful would they be?

Just a few thoughts to add to the discussion...

nick_white wrote:I'll admit to playing devil's advocate a bit here but...

1. Isn't any model that could be applicable to a significant number of projects going to be so generic that it's actually of little use to any specific project?
2. Isn't such a generic model going to be trivial for an experienced dimensional modeler to create?
3. If an inexperienced dimensional modeler can't create a basic model then isn't creating one from scratch a vital learning experience for them? Also, would you really want someone who is incapable of creating the generic model taking it and enhancing it for their specific requirements? I would suggest that their chances of them doing this successfully are slight
3. If the proposal is to create DDL then this is DB-specific. Would there really be the appetite to create Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, etc. versions of each model - and if we didn't then how useful would they be?

Just a few thoughts to add to the discussion...

I think few people would be able to use such dimensional models directly for their datawarehouse. There will always be some mutation be done. But I think it would be great for newcomers to have some starting point which they can build upon.