February 5, 2014 at 8:08 am
I am planning a couple of projects and wondered if I could combine efforts.
We have two specific goals:
1. Reduce load on our OLTP environment by reporting from a dedicated report environment
2. Implement dimensional modeling / cube functionality for analysts
My question is, can I (should I) develop reports over the data source views which will ultimately support the OLAP environment? Currently, I extract data to a staging area and I am in the process of building views which would support dims and facts. Would you suggest building other views over the same staging data to support reporting and / or building reports over the dims / facts or cube itself?
Sorry for the multi-question, fully-loaded, open-ended post. Thanks for your insight.
Nick
February 5, 2014 at 10:47 am
I personally wouldn't build views for dims/facts over the staging tables. I'd use SCD2 design and create a proper warehouse. The SSAS then just sits on top of that. You call whichever makes the most sense for the report when you build it.
Running views to make dim/facts only really works for small data loads which you don't need the warehouse for in the first place. The indexing in a warehouse is very different, which is why you reorganize all the data in the first place.
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February 5, 2014 at 6:32 pm
Thanks Craig,
I'm a bit new to dimensional modeling and misunderstood a best practice. Rather than using views as source for dims and fact tables... use views of dims and facts to support a cube. This seems to be fairly common with the primary advantage of easy maintenance if you're used to TSQL...
That said... I am working through creation of my dim / facts with intention of building some indexes focused on reads.
I suppose my question now is can I (should I) use the same dim / facts and subsequent views to support reporting as well as ssas?
Thanks again...
February 5, 2014 at 10:06 pm
Nick-957131 (2/5/2014)
I suppose my question now is can I (should I) use the same dim / facts and subsequent views to support reporting as well as ssas?Thanks again...
Oh, sure. You'll normally simply preprocess your cubes during overnights for daily work, but if you have reports and the like that don't make sense for the overkill MDX can be sometimes, go nuts.
The reporting database typically won't be real time. If you need real time reports, keep the filters tight and run them off the OLTP system. Warehouses and OLAP are typically used more for overview type stuff, not realtime.
Of course, there's exceptions to that everywhere.
Never stop learning, even if it hurts. Ego bruises are practically mandatory as you learn unless you've never risked enough to make a mistake.
For better assistance in answering your questions[/url] | Forum Netiquette
For index/tuning help, follow these directions.[/url] |Tally Tables[/url]
Twitter: @AnyWayDBA
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