AdventureWorksDW-No Role Playing Dimensions?

  • I'm trying to read up on SSAS and going through some tutorials.

    They show the DimDate and FactResellerSales.

    What I don't understand is how Fact can have 3 date dimensions all to the same DimDate table.

    Kimball (and what I though was common sense at least in my head) says you need a role playing dimension.

    I assume I am missing something here?

  • Those are the role playing dimensions.

    You have the order date, the ship date and the due date.

    This is realized by joining 3 times to the same date dimension, but each time using a different date column from the fact table.

    OrderDateKey -- DateKey

    ShipDateKey -- DateKey

    DueDateKey -- DateKey

    You could use 3 different views on top of the date dimension, but the result is the same.

    When you create the cube, you add the date dimension three times as a cube dimension and there you can rename them as well.

    Need an answer? No, you need a question
    My blog at https://sqlkover.com.
    MCSE Business Intelligence - Microsoft Data Platform MVP

  • OF COURSE, I forgot about the CUBE and it being an abstraction layer.

    So when it generates itself it will just know that it joins to the Date dimension and the cube will populate up as needed.

    Thanks!

Viewing 3 posts - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply