Avoiding Multiple Role-Playing Date Dimensions
If we investigate the Adventure Works SSAS solution, we'll notice that whoever built it has chosen to use a role-playing Date dimension for various dates (e.g. Date, Ship Date, Delivery Date, etc.). I am not saying that instead, we should have multiple identical date dimensions - no, this would be a very bad idea. However, we could simplify things a bit by providing one Date dimension and then build a separate "Event" dimension, which represents the various events during the lifetime of an order. Possible dimension members would be Ordered, Shipped, Delivered, etc.
Read more...Tags: design, management, dimension