Thursday, February 13, 2014

Types of Inventory Dimension Models



Types of Inventory Models

1.       Periodic snapshot
2.       Inventory Transactions
3.       Inventory Accumulating Snapshots

Periodic Snapshot
This type of model takes the snapshot of data at regular intervals of time and stores it in DWH. The grain in such a fact table would be date at which the snap shot is taken. For example in Banking business it is very important to understand what is the Gross Loan amount, Net Loan amount, gross receivable, net receivable, gross delinquent amount at the end of each month or week. Thus to capture the complete business snapshot, snapshot is taken at the end of every regular interval. This enables the analysts to compare the business situation and performance let’s say business in March 2011 with the business in April 2011 or with business in March 2012.
Since the date when the snapshot is taken holds the highest importance it serves as the key in the fact table



Inventory Transactions
In this type of model every single transaction is recorded and thus it increases the granularity. The grain in such a schema is the transaction.  Thus even if the transaction fact table is simple in nature it still contains a lot of information.


Inventory Accumulating Snapshot

This kind of model serves best when a process, which is modelled, has a definite beginning some definite milestones and a definite end. One row is generated and each cell of that row is populated as and when the milestone is achieved.
For example in a Loan processing system, when the loan is approved a row is generated in the fact table and then here are multiple steps in a pipeline till the time final disbursement is made. The row would contain the loan approval date, the document submission date, the document send to back office date, the document verification date and loan disbursement date. Each and every time when the milestone is achieved the cell is updated. This process is very useful to understand the pipeline and visualize the complete loan disbursement process in one go.

 


Comparison



References
2.       Ralph Kimball, Margy Ross The data Warehouse Toolkit 3.0

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