[dba-SQLServer] VLDBs, the saga - Ramblings only

And in fact I won't even need to recalc nightly since the data simply
doesn't change unless I make updates or merges.

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com 

-----Original Message-----
From: dba-sqlserver-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-sqlserver-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Arthur
Fuller
Sent: Thursday, September 02, 2004 12:45 AM
To: dba-sqlserver at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: RE: [dba-SQLServer] VLDBs, the saga - Ramblings only


Almost by definition a data warehouse is about as denormalized as you can
get. Typically it is way bigger than the OLTP database from which it stems.
It creates an un-normalized database from the central fact table and
calculates all the totals for every dimension. The more dimensions, the
larger the table, but the advantage is that everything is precalculated so
nothing has to be derived ad-hoc. In the ideal world, you refresh the OLAP
db every night when the managers are asleep and next morning the data is
fresh again. Theoretically :)

A.