Types of Dimensions in datawarehouse

Confirmed Dimensions, Junk Dimensions, and Degenerated Dimensions

Conformed Dimensions (CD): these dimensions are something that is built once in your model and can be reused multiple times with different fact tables. For example, consider a model containing multiple fact tables, representing different data marts. Now look for a dimension that is common to these facts tables. In this example let’s consider that the product dimension is common and hence can be reused by creating short cuts and joining the different fact tables.Some of the examples are time dimension, customer dimensions, product dimension.

Junked Dimensions (JD): When you consolidate lots of small dimensions and instead of having 100s of small dimensions, that will have few records in them, cluttering your database with these mini ‘identifier’ tables, all records from all these small dimension tables are loaded into ONE dimension table and we call this dimension table Junk dimension table. (Since we are storing all the junk in this one table) For example: a company might have handful of manufacture plants, handful of order types, and so on, so forth, and we can consolidate them in one dimension table called junked dimension table.

Degenerated Dimension (DD): An item that is in the fact table but is stripped off of its description, because the description belongs in dimension table, is referred to as Degenerated Dimension. Since it looks like dimension, but is really in fact table and has been degenerated of its description, hence is called degenerated dimension. Now coming to the slowly changing dimensions (SCD) and Slowly Growing Dimensions (SGD): I would like to classify them to be more of an attributes of dimensions its self.

Although other might disagree to this view but Slowly Changing Dimensions are basically those dimensions whose key value will remain static but description might change over the period of time. For example, the product id in a companies, product line might remain the same, but the description might change from time to time, hence, product dimension is called slowly changing dimension.

Lets consider a customer dimension, which will have a unique customer id but the customer name (company name) might change periodically due to buy out / acquisitions, Hence, slowly changing dimension, as customer number is static but customer name is changing, However, on the other hand the company will add more customers to its existing list of customers and it is highly unlikely that the company will acquire astronomical number of customer over night (wouldn’t the company CEO love that) hence, the customer dimension is both a Slowly changing as well as slowly growing dimension.