Charlotte Foust
cfoust at infostatsystems.com
Thu Jul 26 13:31:16 CDT 2007
Can you give an example of a typical dimension table and what you mean by the source primary table? I've worked primarily with date dimensions using the date as the PK. Charlotte Foust -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Robert L. Stewart Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 11:04 AM To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com Subject: Re: [AccessD] Primary Key Best Practices I have watched all the flaming and was surprised at the lack of intelligence and total stubborness in some of it. I do not know if what I do is best practice or not. But, I will go with consistency. In a transactional database, all tables have a surrogate, autonumbering primary key. They also have one or more unique indexes on the candidate key or keys. Also, indexes on all foreign key columns. In a data warehouse or data mart, all dimension tables will have a single column primary key inherited from the source primary table. All fact tables will have multiple columns that make up the primary key. There are no snowflakes. It is a true star schema. Best practice or not, as long as I am consistent in my designs, I will always know how to use it properly. And, I can always explain it to the monkeys that come after. Robert -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com