Bus Matrix

the foundation of your Data

Warehouse

Bill Anton
Prime Data Intelligence

What we will cover today:

Dimensional Modeling 101
What, Why, How
Common Challenges

Bus Matrix
What is it?
How does it help?
Examples

Kimball Dimensional DW

What is Dimensional Modeling?

Dimensional modeling
Logical design technique for
structuring data
It is intuitive to business users
Easy-to-understand

Fast query performance

Primary constructs of a dimensional

model
fact tables
dimension tables

What is Dimensional Modeling?

Facts
additive amounts
E.g. Sales amount,
inventory quantity
SUM, AVERAGE,
MAX, MIN, COUNT

Dimensions
descriptive
attributes
E.g. Date, Product,
Location, Customer
GROUP BY
<attribute>,
<attribute>, etc

Fact Table
Measurements associated with a specific business process
Grain: level of detail of the table
Process events produce fact records
Facts (attributes) are usually
Numeric
Additive

Derived facts included

Foreign (surrogate) keys refer to dimension tables (entities)
Classification values help define subsets

Grain (unit of analysis)

The grain determines what each fact record represents:
the level of detail.
For example
Individual transactions
Snapshots (points in time)
Line items on a document

Generally better to focus on the smallest grain

Dimension Tables
Entities describing the objects of the process
Conformed dimensions cross processes
Attributes are descriptive
Text
Numeric

Surrogate keys
Less volatile than facts (1:m with the fact table)
Null entries
Date dimensions
Produce by questions

E.g. Date
Dimensions

Fiscal Year

Calendar Year

Fiscal Quarter

Calendar
Quarter

Fiscal Month

Calendar
Month

Fiscal Week

Calendar
Week

Type of Day

Day of Week

Day

Holiday

Attribute Name
Attribute Description
Day
The specific day that an activity took
place.
Day of Week
The specific name of the day.
Holiday
Identifies that this day is a holiday.
Type of Day
Indicates whether or not this day is
a weekday or a weekend day.
Calendar Week
The week ending date, always a
Saturday. Note that WE denotes
Calendar Month
The calendar month.
Calendar Quarter
Calendar Year
Fiscal Week
Fiscal Month
Fiscal Quarter
Fiscal Year

Sample Values
06/04/1998; 06/05/1998
Monday; Tuesday
Easter; Thanksgiving
Weekend; Weekday

WE 06/06/1998;
WE 06/13/1998
January,1998; February,
1998
The calendar quarter.
1998Q1; 1998Q4
The calendar year.
1998
The week that represents the
F Week 1 1998;
corporate calendar. Note that the F F Week 46 1998
The fiscal period comprised of 4 or 5 F January, 1998;
weeks. Note that the F in the data
F February, 1998
The grouping of 3 fiscal months.
F 1998Q1; F1998Q2
The grouping of 52 fiscal weeks / 12 F 1998; F 1999
fiscal months that comprise the
financial year.

What is Dimensional Modeling?

Star Schema

CUSTOMER
customer_ID (PK)
customer_name
purchase_profile
credit_profile
address
STORE
store_ID (PK)
store_name
address
district
floor_type
CLERK
clerk_id (PK)
clerk_name
clerk_grade

ERD

ORDER
order_num (PK)
customer_ID (FK)
store_ID (FK)
clerk_ID (FK)
date

PRODUCT
SKU (PK)
description
brand
category
ORDER-LINE
order_num (PK) (FK)
SKU (PK) (FK)
promotion_key (FK)
dollars_sold
units_sold
dollars_cost
PROMOTION
promotion_NUM (PK)
promotion_name
price_type
ad_type

TIME
time_key (PK)
SQL_date
day_of_week
month
STORE
store_key (PK)
store_ID
store_name
address
district
floor_type
CLERK
clerk_key (PK)
clerk_id
clerk_name
clerk_grade

DIMENSONAL
MODEL

FACT
time_key (FK)
store_key (FK)
clerk_key (FK)
product_key (FK)
customer_key (FK)
promotion_key (FK)
dollars_sold
units_sold
dollars_cost

PRODUCT
product_key (PK)
SKU
description
brand
category
CUSTOMER
customer_key (PK)
customer_name
purchase_profile
credit_profile
address

PROMOTION
promotion_key (PK)
promotion_name
price_type
ad_type

What is Dimensional Modeling?

Denormalization
Repeating Values
Opposite of normalized (e.g. 3rd Normal Form)
Optimized for reads (not writes)

Why Dimensional Modeling

Intuitive to Business Users
Simpler than OLTP/3NF
Rise of Self-Service (E.g. Power Pivot, Power View)

Iterative Development
Agile

Performance
Optimized for analytical queries
e.g. sales amount by product in 2013 for top 10 all-time customers

And many more

See Teo Lachevs WHY SEMANTIC LAYER newsletter:
http://www.prologika.com/Newsroom/Newsletter2013Fall.aspx

Intuitive to Business Users

How many bikes did we sell last

year?

Do we sell more bikes to single or

married females?

What was our most/least profitable

product this year?

What was the Average Monthly Gross Margin

Return on Inventory Investment (GMROII) by
Product Category for the trailing 6 months?

Its
Complicated

Star-Schema

1 Star per Fact table

Sales Process

Inventory Process

Facts are related through

dimensions

Sales Process

Inventory Process

Facts are related through

Conformed Dimensions
dimensions
A conformed dimension is a set of data attributes
that have been physically referenced by
multiple fact tables using the same key
value to refer to the same structure, attributes,
domain values, definitions and concepts.
Dimensions are conformed when they are either
exactly the same (including keys) or one is a
perfect subset of the other.
Dimension tables are NOT conformed if the
attributes are labeled differently or contain
different values.

Revisiting Average Monthly Gross Margin

Return on Inventory Investment (GMROII)

Average
Monthly
GMROII

Profit for
total time
period

Sum of each month

ending inventory cost

Gross Margin
Return on Inventory Investment (GMROII)
What was the Average Monthly

by Product Category for the trailing 6 months?

Where things start to get complex

1 Star per Fact table
Multiple Fact tables per business process
Multiple business processes in an enterprise

Dimensional Model becomes a Galaxy

of Stars
Financ
e

Producti
on

Sales
Distributi
on

HR

ER Diagram: Adventure Works

Sample DW

For bigger Data Warehouses

This ^^

Turns into this ^^

Variety of Problems to Overcome

with Dimensional Modeling
Communication & Strategy
Whats the short term plan of attack?
Whats the long term plan of attack?

Documentation
Whats in our Data Warehouse?
Business Users cant read ER diagrams
Business Users are typically only familiar with a 1 or 2 business
processes
E.g. Sales User vs Inventory User; Warehouse Supervisor vs CEO

Conforming Dimensions is hardREALLY hard

So are changes (E.g. Impact Analysis)

Whats the Solution?

Train business users to read ER Diagrams?
Simplify Data Model?
Ignore certain business processes?
Dont use Conformed Dimensions?
Force business users to manually map data between
processes?

What about a Bus Matrix?

What is a Bus Matrix?

2-dimensional
visualization showing
the intersection of
facts and dimensions

Variety of Use-Cases for a Bus

Matrix
Documentation, Communication, Training
Facilitate User Adoption of BI tools
Communicate Expectations w/ Business
New users unfamiliar with new business process

Team Development
Agile
Prioritization of Tasks
Divide & Conquer

Road-Mapping
Prioritization of Business Processes in a Business Intelligence
Program

Documentation For Business

Documentation for IT

Master Bus Matrix

Team Development
Sprint 1
Internet Sales

Sprint 2
Reseller Sales

Road-Mapping

When To Create a Bus Matrix

During Requirements Gathering
Before You Start Development!
Updated Over Time
Changes to Business Processes
New Source Systems (E.g. mergers/acquisitions)

How To Create a Bus Matrix

Manual via Excel

Automated via SSRS

Manual
Only option when starting
out ;-)
Updates can be made quickly
made as requirements come in
Adds development overhead,
but the ROI is well worth it

Automated
Reporting pack with drillthrough to data dictionary
information
Can be based on Cube or
Relational Database (*FK
required)
Incorporate query statistics to
visualize common usage
patterns
Use MDS to allow SMEs to
manage business definitions
Based on example from Alex Whittles
http://www.purplefrogsystems.com/blog/2010/09/olap-cube-documentation-in-ssrs-part-1/

QUESTIONS

References

Twitter:
@SQLbyoBI
Blog: http://byoBI.com
Email:
william.anton@gmail.com

http://byobi.com/blog/bus-mat
rix/