The fact tables contain quantitative data that might be queried or acquired to measure and the dimension tables are smaller and hold descriptive data that relates to measure and reflect upon the data hierarchy in the database.
There are four phases in the development process –
- Analysis
- Design
- Data gathering
- Loading phases
Analysis process is completely taken care by analysts which will be having a sound knowledge of the process to be followed. In general, this phase is carried forward by concerned personnel sitting at client end.
The
Design phase includes four tasks, which are: identifying measures, identifying dimensions and their hierarchies, designing and creating physical models by defining schema of fact and dimension tables.
This process is called high level design.
Furthermore,
Data gathering phase involves extracting and cleaning data to prepare it for loading into the warehouse. This phase is called low level design.
The last phase,
loading phase, is to load the prepared data into the data warehouse.
