SPEAKER: Paul S. Waters

During Paul’s 16 years of working in IT, he has held a variety of positions including Director of IT, application developer, network administrator and help desk manager. He is a business intelligence architect for AMECO in Greenville, SC working with SharePoint and the Microsoft Business Intelligence technology stack. He enjoys problem-solving and especially welcomes the ever-changing variety of challenges that comes with working in the field of information technology. 

His leadership in the Upstate South Carolina IT community includes Founder and President of the SQL Server Innovators Guild (www.ssig.org), Founding Board Member of the GSA Technology Council (www.gsatc.org), member of Greenville Technical College’s Program Advisory Council, member of ECPI College of Technology’s Advisory Board, former Co-Chairman of the South Carolina Code Camp 2.0 (www.sccodecamp.com) and organizer of SQL Saturday #9.  Additionally, he is a frequent presenter at user groups and business lunch-and-learns.

A Dimensional Data Model is at the core of most Business Intelligence and Data Analysis systems.  Unlike normalized, transactional database designs built for efficient writes and ease of application development, dimensional data models are build for efficient reads and ease of reporting and analytics.  Designing dimensions around subject areas such as customers, products, locations, and employees as they change over time can be the most challenging part of a well-designed Dimensional Model.

After an overview of Dimensional Modeling, the presentation will cover the fundamentals of type 1, 2 and 3 Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD), how and when to use them, and how to combine them.