Kimball Forum
Would you like to react to this message? Create an account in a few clicks or log in to continue.

Need for a dimensional modeling tool?

3 posters

Go down

Need for a dimensional modeling tool? Empty Need for a dimensional modeling tool?

Post  Andrea Vincenzi Wed Feb 02, 2011 2:59 pm

I'd like to hear opinions from members of this group about the need for a modeling tool that's more oriented towards dimensional models.
Most of us use Erwin or a similar modeling tool, which is designed for general E/R modeling (to be honest, Erwin also has a few features for dimensional models, but they are quite limited).
A modeling tool oriented toward dimensional models should be able to understand concepts like facts (with measures), dimensions (with attributes and hierarchies), degenerate dimensions etc.

One of the benefits would be the possibility to represent star schemas with hierarchies in a graphical format (see for example this image taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensional_Fact_Model):
Need for a dimensional modeling tool? DFMSimpleFactSchema

This format could be used to document the data model and to discuss it with the client during analysis, although I think that am E/R model with a well designed star schema can be understood by non technical people.

Any comments?
Andrea Vincenzi
Andrea Vincenzi

Posts : 8
Join date : 2009-02-04
Age : 69
Location : Rome (Italy)

http://www.olap.it

Back to top Go down

Need for a dimensional modeling tool? Empty Re: Need for a dimensional modeling tool?

Post  BoxesAndLines Thu Feb 03, 2011 11:10 am

ERwin and ER-Studio both have dimensional templates to capture metadata for dimensional models. The only thing ER Studio cannot do is accurately represent the relationship in a bridge table. ERwin has recently added this functionality (i.e. migrate partial PK). I am fairly content with the functionality offerred by the modeling vendors. The fact that the dimensional model does not clearly show collapsed dimension hierarchies (and several other items) is why I encourage folks to build a normalized data model of the data warehouse so that you can clearly identify these and other data issues not available in the dimensional model.
BoxesAndLines
BoxesAndLines

Posts : 1212
Join date : 2009-02-03
Location : USA

Back to top Go down

Need for a dimensional modeling tool? Empty Re: Need for a dimensional modeling tool?

Post  macw0lf Thu Apr 12, 2012 4:54 pm

Although this is an old thread, there is still no purpose built dimensional modelling tool of note. We've built our own tool which we use for documenting the stars and for design work during customer requirement workshops. Seems to work quite well for us, and customers enjoy visualising the schema on the fly as it is developed.

I'm just tidying it up a bit, but shortly we'll be releasing a free edition into the community for others to use.


macw0lf

Posts : 1
Join date : 2012-04-12

Back to top Go down

Need for a dimensional modeling tool? Empty Re: Need for a dimensional modeling tool?

Post  Sponsored content


Sponsored content


Back to top Go down

Back to top

- Similar topics

 
Permissions in this forum:
You cannot reply to topics in this forum