Botched "Data warehouse" design...

  • Someone landed a PowerBI mess in my lap, and near as I can tell, there's no proper data warehouse in this thing. They have an OLTP database with a bunch of wonky views that they're using to sort of create fact and dimension tables, but i think that gives the effort more credit than is due. Is my only option to ask for the table definitions or something? (Assuming I can't just have the entire database, since I don't work directly for them). Otherwise, how do you fix a mess like "well, we don't really have a date dimension, or a Periods dimension. And our customers dimension only has CustomerID"  What do you even do with a mess like that? I get the whole fact table and dimension table bit, but this is botched so badly that I think they need to start over.

    How do you even approach a problem like that?

  • First of all, determine if all those "wonky views" are indexed views or not.

    As for not having a DATE dimension, so what?  You've been here on SSC to know exactly how to work around that with some very efficient code.

    You say that you "don't work directly for them". So, what IS your relationship with them and how are the giving you work to do?

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.


    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

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