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HandlingEarly Arriving Facts

Presented By Sutha Thiru

Edenbrook

ETL Capability Lead

sutha@suthathiru.com

6th October 2007

Agenda

• Typical Warehouse Architecture

• Early Arriving Facts

• Handling early arriving facts

• Demo

• Two Fact Tables Per One Fact Table

• BISC

• Resources

• Q & A06/10/2007 http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/tsutha/ 3

Typical Warehouse Architecture

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SQL ServerSQL

Server

CSV Files /

Text Files

OracleOracle

DB2DB2

ODSODS StageStage WarehouseWarehouse AS CubeAS

Cube

Reporting ServicesPro Clarity

Performance PointShare Point

Excel

Reporting ServicesPro Clarity

Performance PointShare Point

Excel

Early Arriving Facts

• “An Early arriving fact takes place when the activity measurement arrives at the data warehouse without its full context. In other words, the statuses of the dimensions attached to the activity measurement are ambiguous or unknown for some period of time”

Kimball Design Tip #57

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Early Arriving Facts (Contd.)

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WarehouseSource Data Stage

Fact Record – Joe Bloggs, £100 Dimension – 1, John Smith

SSIS SSIS

Early Arriving Facts (Contd.)

• We are running a real-time business.

• When will we get the rest of the data.

• Example for early arriving fact, Sales Transaction for £100 for Customer “Joe Bloggs”. We do not have “Joe Bloggs” in our customer dimension table.

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Points To Be Aware

• Late arriving facts vs early arriving facts.

• Dimensions are “not accurate”.

• Business Intelligence Service Centre (BISC) will get all the exception reports highlighting default dimensions as well as rejected facts.

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Handling Early Arriving Facts

• 3 Options

–Reject early arriving facts altogether.

–Map early arriving facts to default Surrogate key.

–Generate dimension on the fly and map the surrogate key to the fact record.

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Handling Early Arriving Facts DEMO

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2 Fact Tables

• Why do we recommend two fact tables?–When default surrogate key (-1) is mapped we

don’t load the main fact table.

–We load them into separate fact tables.

– BISC is responsible to fix these default surrogate key fact records.

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2 Fact Tables (Contd.)

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2 Fact Tables (Contd.)

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Why do we do this?

Business Intelligence Service Centre (BISC)

• The objective of the BISC is to support the business in deriving maximum value from the Business Intelligence solution as well as working with IT to ensure the solution evolves on a sound technical foundation

• Key Personnel BISC Manager

Data Manager

BI Senior Analyst

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BI Skills & Processes

Data & Technology

BISC

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BusinessBusiness

The Success of BISC dependant on Placing Business at the heart of BISC.

BISC Responsible For

• Provides BI Roadmap Governance

• Facilitate communication

• Standardise internal and external reporting

• Support business users in self service reporting

• Provides a central unit for a data stewardship

• Validating specification for reports

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BISC Is Not Responsible For

• Data not in the BI Framework

• Cleaning the data

• Authoring Reports

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BISC Roles

• BISC Manager– Overall responsibility for BISC

– BI Roadmap Management

– Benefits Realisation

• Data Manager–Meta Data Management

– Organise Data Cleansing Process

– Define Data Management approach

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BISC Roles (Contd.)

• BI Senior Analyst– Gather requirements for future phases

– Support business to create reports

– Liaise with key users in the business

– Intermediary role between IT and business

– Perform advanced analysis where required

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Resources

• http://www.rkimball.com/html/designtipsPDF/

• http://sqlblogcasts.com/

• http://www.sqlis.com/

• http://blogs.conchango.com/jamiethomson/

• http://cwebbbi.spaces.live.com/

• http://www.sqlserverfaq.com/

• http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/showforum.aspx?forumid=80&siteid=1

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Thank You

Q & A

06/10/2007 http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/tsutha/ 21

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