The architecture of business intelligence databases are not set up in the traditional way. I will explain how it is setup with the use
of a cool presentation platform I discovered. Really cool, but first let’s get the theory behind it.
The classic star schema
In OLAP systems, multidimensional tables are used for analysis. This is more suitable for reporting purposes.
The classic star schema consists of
- A fact table that stores the data you want to measure. For examples, the sales amount, sales revenue etc. This table is the only highly normalized table in the system.
- Multiple dimension tables, which store the attributes describing the facts. These tables are de-normalized, meaning they can have repetitive data.
The extended star schema
SAP Business Intelligence has adopted the classic star schema and enhanced it to fit its own needs. The dimensions are now called characteristics and the facts are called key figures.
Characteristics can have texts, attributes, and hierarchies. This concept is now embedded into the star schema.
You can access the customer dimension from the fact table and from there you will be able to access more information about the customer, in this case the text, which are the customer names, attributes like the age, and hierarchies like the department in the customer’s company.
I discovered a company Prezi with a very cool presentation platform. I made a presentation to illustrate the info in this blog post.
You can view the presentation here, Business Intelligence data architecture.
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