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A Nonunique Composite Foreign Key-Based Approach to Fact Table Modeling and MDX Query Composing
Journal of The Korea Society of Computer and Information
Abbr :
JKSCI
2007, 12(1), pp.179-190
Publisher : The Korean Society Of Computer And Information
Research Area : Computer Science
2007, 12(1), pp.179-190
Publisher : The Korean Society Of Computer And Information
Research Area : Computer Science
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A star schema consists of a central fact table, which is surrounded by one or more dimension tables. Each row in the fact table contains a multi-part primary key(or a composite foreign key) along with one or more columns containing various facts about the data stored in the row. Each of the composit foreign key components is related to a dimensional table. The combination of keys in the fact table creates a composite foreign key that is unique to the fact table record. The composite foreign key, however, is rarely unique to the fact table record in real-world applications, particularly in financial applications. In order to make the composite foreign key be the determinant in real-world application, some precalculation might be performed in the SQL relational database, and cached in the OLAP database. However, there are many drawbacks to this approach. In some cases, this approach might give users the wrong results. In this paper, an approach to fact table modeling and related MDX query composing, which can be used in real-world applications without performing any precalculation and gives users the correct results, is proposed.
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