BI Learning - Fundamental Concepts

We have covered couple of previous posts on BI Learning's. Currently I'm learning/reading book Expert Cube Development With MS SQL Server 2008. This book is very good starter for beginners as well. Below are my handy notes on Basic BI concepts.

Fundamental Concepts

• Fact - Represents Action, Something that has happened. Example- No of units sold, No of Repairs completed.
• Dimension - Dimensions are attributes. Example - Product Type, Department Type, Date. Natural key would be product code, department code. Surrogate key is integer number (Identity Column) generated in dimension table. Fact and dimensions relate via surrogate key. 
• Slowly Changing Dimensions - Managing dimension attribute changes over time.
• Datamart - Database containing fact and dimension tables

More Details notes and learning please get your copy of book Expert Cube Development With MS SQL Server 2008.

Looking forward for more BI exercises in coming weeks. From MSDN SQL Server Analysis Services Tutorial is my next learning point.

 

 

Happy Learning!!!